HB 60 -- Different Views from Two Gun Rights Organizations

Georgia has just passed its first new gun law in some years, HB 60. As someone who receives a lot of email from various Georgia legislative lobbies, I'm struck by the differential on how the two leading gun rights organizations in Georgia are portraying this bill.

NRA-ILA:

Georgia: Historic Victory for the Second Amendment

...Your gun rights were not only preserved this year, but were restored and advanced further than they ever have in the history of the Peach State. This truly is an historic day for Georgia gun owners, shooters and sportsmen....

This resounding victory must first and foremost be credited to our members, who tirelessly worked to ensure that passage of this bill was possible. We also thank the following state lawmakers who went above and beyond this year and were critical in seeing this bill through to the end...

Georgia Gun Owners:

In the end, Republicans at the Capitol caved to internal and extrenal forces [Michael Bloomberg's anti-gun groups] and gutted the bill of clean "church carry," any form of "campus carry," refused to allow committee hearings or a vote on "constitutional carry," and continue to leave our children unprotected, sitting ducks at thousands of elementary, middle and high schools in the state.

In one of the most Republican-dominated legislatures in the country, Republicans caved on core Second Amendment issues, more scared of the media and Michael Bloomberg than their actual constituents....

Nathan Deal, Lt. Governor Cagle, and other establishment Republicans played politics with your gun rights for four years, passing and signing just one gun bill during that time.

Ironically, a gun bill passed this year, when Deal needed it the most -- in an election year when he's out looking for votes and endorsements of gun groups.

If Deal is re-elected, expect four more years of his administration working to kill gun legislation.

GGO bills itself as Georgia's only "no-compromise" gun rights organization, and clearly it is that. This was an NRA-ILA bill, and they got it through in part by yielding up a lot of the things GGO wanted.

I have some concerns about the mental health requirements, not because they are especially onerous, but because there's simply no way to prove one's mental health. If it comes to be questioned, even if there is a relief process through the courts, there is going to be a crap-shoot aspect to the process: relief will depend on drawing a good judge or jury. Mental health doesn't admit of lab tests, or certainty in diagnosis, or really any form of genuine proof at all. If you are put on the list, you just may never get back off again no matter what you do or how deserving you are.

That said, I understand why people worry so much about mental cases with guns. It's a kind of tragedy that we don't have a better way of understanding mental health than we do, here as elsewhere.