This Isn’t Freedom

My home state only gets in the New York Times when it does something stupid.

Missouri’s Republican-controlled Legislature voted Wednesday to override Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto and enact a wholesale retreat from gun safety in the state.

The law will let citizens carry concealed weapons in public without a state gun permit, criminal background check or firearms training. It strips local law enforcement of its current authority to deny firearms to those guilty of domestic violence and to other high-risk individuals. And it establishes a dangerous “stand your ground” standard that will allow gun owners to shoot and claim self-defense based on their own sense of feeling threatened. …

… Republican legislative leaders, who cut short debate on the override vote on the last day of the session, were ebullient in overriding a variety of the governor’s vetoes beyond the gun measure, including one that will force voters to show a government photo ID.

That’s right; they also overrode a veto of a voter ID law. That one is problematic, however —

Even though the veto was overridden, the bill won’t become law unless voters decide in November to amend the state’s constitution to allow a photo ID requirement. That’s because the Missouri Supreme Court deemed voter ID unconstitutional in 2006, ruling that the law amounted to a “heavy and substantial burden on Missourians’ free exercise of the right of suffrage.”

If voters reject the constitutional amendment this fall, voter ID remains unconstitutional and the enacting legislation voted on Wednesday is moot.

We’ll see. Anyway, regarding the “Shoot-Me State’s” new Derp Gun Law, most of it won’t go into effect until January 1. This gives residents with any sense more than three months to clear out.

The Guardian has a half hour documentary video up called Gun Nation, “A revealing and unsettling journey to the heart of America’s deadly love affair with the gun.” It’s a genteel British guy interviewing gun owners about why they insist on keeping guns. Several of them mention “freedom,” but these people are not free. Nobody that obsessed with the Awful Dangerous Things That Could Get Me is free.