For every bill the Georgia General Assembly passes this session to loosen gun laws, what if lawmakers also agree to apply the same approach to voting?
It seems logical enough, based on the arguments put forward by gun rights activists this week during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on Senate Bill 319, a bill to eliminate the state license that’s now required to carry a concealed firearm in Georgia.
The main argument for supporters of “Constitutional Carry,” as Republicans like to call it, is in the name: Constitutional.
Carrying a firearm is a God-given right enshrined by the Second Amendment, proponents said this week. And law-abiding citizens should not have to jump through government hoops to exercise that right.
Likewise, the right to vote is enshrined in the 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th, and 25th amendments to the Constitution.
By Republicans’ own logic, voting should be equally free of government hoops, or at least afforded the same level of constitutional freedom that gun owners get.
At Wednesday’s Judiciary hearing, state Sen. Jason Anavitarte told his colleagues he sponsored permit-less carry “based on the inherent Second Amendment right that we do not have government barriers, have government bureaucracy, other extra layers and steps, that basically infringes on that right.”
A gun license, the Republican told senators, is a government-sponsored barrier that he wants to eliminate.
Applying for a license to carry a weapon currently includes providing a photo ID, but so does voting. Is the new voter ID requirement in SB 202 just as onerous as the permit Republicans want to eliminate?
What if there were a requirement to mail in a gun-license application 78 days before the day you want your permit, but no fewer than 11 days ahead of that day, as SB 202 prescribes for absentee voting applications? Would that infringe upon gun owners’ rights, too?
The first witness for Republicans at the Wednesday hearing, Aaron Dorr, was introduced as being with “Georgia Gun Owners,” but he is primarily the executive director of Iowa Gun Owners and has worked to loosen gun laws in Missouri, Wyoming, Iowa, and elsewhere.
“This is about freedom,” he said. “And it’s about law-abiding Georgians not having to put their name in a government database, being tracked by their own government, just to exercise a Second Amendment right.”
If having your name in a database is extreme, what about the state voter file? It’s a government database.
Another argument from the Constitutional Carriers on Wednesday was the sheer futility of gun laws. Bad guys don’t follow the laws, only good guys do, so why have the laws at all?
“Do the folks who break the law care if we have a law that says they need a gun permit?” Sen. Blake Tillery, a Republican from Vidalia, asked rhetorically, but not really, because Anavitarte answered anyway.
“No,” Anavitarte said. The bad guys don’t care about the laws.
So if bad buys don’t apply for concealed carry permits, it’s also logical to assume that bad guys are not going to legally apply for an absentee ballot either.
So why make it so hard for the good guys to vote?
When the hearing wasn’t divining the Founding Fathers’ intent, state Sen. Elena Parent also pointed out that the existing permit process kept more than 5,000 applicants in Georgia from obtaining weapons carry licenses in 2020.
The majority of denials were based on prior criminal convictions, outstanding arrests, mental health flags, or domestic violence charges. It turns out the bad guys did care about the law, in 2020 anyway.
Late Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed SB 319 by a vote of 6 to 3.
Needing a permit to exercise your Second Amendment rights in Georgia could soon be a thing of the past.
As for your exercising your 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th, and 25th Amendment rights, the Georgia General Assembly will tell you when, where and how to exercise those God-given rights when they’re good and ready.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution