Kentucky Constitutional Carry Dead for 2017?

On opencarry.org, a poster has been in intimate contact with the attempt to pass “permitless” or Constitutional carry in Kentucky.  His screen name is “gutshot”, and he has shown a very good understanding of the legislative mechanics and the personalities involved in the process. Another participant asked him if the Constitutional carry bills in the House and Senate might get out of committee. Gutshot is clear and he is frustrated.  It shows in his answer. On Thursday, 2 March, 2017, gutshot posted his answer.  From opencarry.org:

No and no. This year’s session is over. Wednesday is the last working day for this year. Even if SB7 were voted out of committee today, there would not be enough time to get it a floor vote and then to a House committee and passed in that chamber. We are not going to get any gun bills passed this year. Not one.
No, they won’t “sit on it until next year”. Bills don’t get carried over from year to year. Everything will start fresh next year. Some of the bills from this year will be back, some won’t. Some of the sponsors will persist and others will decide its not going to happen or that its too hard and give up. New bills that we have never seen before will show up. The idea behind a bill might persist, but some bills will show up in a new form. I have no idea if Senator Robinson wants to try this again and if he does, what changes he may want. I doubt he knows, right now. This has been a very frustrating experience, two years in a row. I don’t even know why I am working on this. Constitutional carry does nothing for me. I’ll never give up my CCDW, so passing constitution carry is never going to effect me and it appears that those few people that it will effect, don’t really care that much about it. I just want to live in a state that respects people’s rights, especially gun rights. There are problems that do effect me directly that I could spend my time on.

Kentucky has a very short legislative session in odd numbered years. There are only 30 days total to be used for legislation, over a three month period, as shown in the calendar.

Gutshot knows the system.  There is almost no way, short of a miracle, for Constitutional carry to pass now. The bills died in committee, as a great many bills do. The possibility of passing a Constitutional carry bill looked good for Kentucky this year, but the stars did not line up correctly.

In New Hampshire, Constitutional carry passed twice with large majorities, but was vetoed by a Democrat governor, twice.  It finally was passed and signed into law in 2017, by a Republican legislature and governor.

Kentucky may get a Constitutional carry law eventually, but it will not be in 2017.

©2017 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

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