Brothers In Arms?

NRA, Brady Group

On Common Ground?

Democracy takes some funny bounces and this week’s fielder’s nightmare finds both the National Rifle Association and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence coming off the same bat.

The bat belongs to Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, who has proposed an amendment to the current Defense Authorization Bill that would, in his website’s words, “help in reducing crime by providing reciprocity for the carrying of concealed firearms.”

Explained simply, the amendment would allow someone who met home-state concealed-carry rules to pack heat into another state even if the “host” state’s laws would have denied the permit. A resident of Vermont, which requires no permits to carry or conceal a weapon, could legally bring a weapon into New Jersey, where the rules are very strict.

Some form of concealed carry is legal in every state except Illinois and Wisconsin, and the NRA warmly supports the Thune amendment, saying on a website “Now is the time for Congress to recognize that the right to self-defense does not end at state lines.”

The Brady folks also feel warm about the Thune amendment, just warm heading in the opposite direction. The Brady website says “This legislation, if passed, will endanger public safety and make it more difficult for law enforcement to do their jobs.”

So of the three, who’s making sense?

They all are, because whether they recognize it or not, their stands here implicitly recognize a national issue being mishandled by a hodge-podge of often conflicting state laws.

Senator Thune’s constituents in South Dakota can take satisfaction in seeing their guy earn his pay by spotting something so state-fragmented that it that doesn’t make sense and proposing a national solution. You know, like a United States Senator.

And while both the NRA and the Brady outfits have embraced states rights when convenient, they both have glowed when their views got on the national stage.

The Brady law is a national law, named after James Brady, wounded in the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. Brady and his wife Sarah are the mainsprings of the Brady Campaign, which describes itself as a “national, non-partisan, grassroots organization.”

The NRA would very much like to see D.C. v. Heller applied on a national basis. That’s the recent Supreme Court decision that said the Second Amendment prohibited the federal government and federal entities like the District of Columbia from banning handguns for self-defense.

So Senator Thune, the NRA and the Brady Campaign may be able to find at least this much common ground:

Leaving a national issue like gun rights to state and local regulation produces an unworkable mess. Just as the unworkable mess of state and local voting laws were fixed by the 26^th Amendment to the Constitution’s declaration that everyone could vote at 18, we need to fix the unworkable mess of conflicting state and local gun laws.

How that fix comes and which of the many views it favors are items for down the road. But all the views can unite in saying that road must now be taken, starting at least from that much common ground.

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