By: Anthony Morelli
It was a catastrophic day for the gun control lobby.
Their plans have been demolished after losing this legal fight.
And now it’s completely back to square one for these anti-gun activists.
As Republican states across the country continue to pass laws like Constitutional Carry that protect the right to bear arms, Democrats have been in open rebellion.
Since most of the urban areas in these red states are controlled by Democrats, the leaders of these cities have tried to ignore the new laws and simply pass gun control on their own.
Of course they have no right to do this, but they want to see just how far they can push the limit and still get away with it.
But the anti-gun lobby in Memphis, Tennessee, found out the hard way that there are consequences to trying to ignore state law.
The state threatened to withhold funding from their city, and they were forced to take a gun control measure off the ballot.
Now they are reeling as they have no realistic path forward to pass gun control in Tennessee, and their movement has been set back years.
According to the Associated Press, “Election officials in Memphis decided Tuesday to leave three gun control questions off the November ballot after top Republican state leaders threatened to withhold tens of millions of dollars in state funding.
“On Monday, Tennessee’s election coordinator, Mark Goins, sent a letter to the Shelby County Election Commission warning that the gun control measures violated several of Tennessee’s laws, making them void and ineligible to be placed on the ballot. The letter was sent hours after House Speaker Cameron Sexton and Senate Speaker Randy McNally issued their state funding ultimatum.”
By making it clear that they would do what it takes to protect these pro-gun laws, Tennessee Republicans put their Democrat counterparts in a bad spot.
They left Democrats with essentially no way to push gun control.
The article continues, “The continued push to put the gun control questions before Memphis voters prompted not only the state’s top Republican lawmakers to threaten to withhold funding, but also led Secretary of State Tre Hargett to warn that his office would not approve Memphis’ ballot if it included the gun initiatives.
“Last year, Memphis received nearly $78 million from the state’s sales tax revenue. The city currently operates an $858 million budget.”
It would have been a disaster for the city of Memphis if they lost this funding, so they had essentially no choice but to take the gun control measures off the ballot.
If more Republican officials were willing to defend gun rights with this kind of courage, Democrats would perhaps not be quite so bold about trying to take guns away.
Democrats in Memphis have learned the hard way that there are real consequences to ignoring state law in order to pass gun control.
And now they have virtually no path forward to take guns away in the state of Tennessee, as their efforts have failed.