Bill B. passes on an email blast from the West Virginia Citizen’s Defense League:

Five bills passed (the West Virginia) legislature.

 HB2471: Speaker Rick Thompson’s bill prevents firearms or ammunition confiscations during a time of emergency. This is the “Hurricane Katrina” bill. Jackbooted thugs will not be allowed to storm your home and confiscate your firearms during a state of emergency as happened during Hurricane Katrina . . .

SB369: Senator John Unger’s bill makes it legal for the Attorney General to enter into a concealed carry reciprocity agreement with any state that is willing to sign. It takes away onerous restrictions we placed on other states, making them ineligible to join with us. At the least, I would expect this to allow the AG’s office to add Georgia and Alabama to our list of reciprocal states.

HB2866: Delegate Bill Hamilton’s bill makes a change to the 500 foot rule. It is currently illegal in West Virginia to discharge a firearm within 500 feet of a building or structure. There is no exception for your own house. So if your nearest neighbor is six miles away, it would still be illegal to shoot within 500 feet of your own house. This bill makes an exception for your own property, as long as no one else’s house or structure is within 500 feet of you. It is a simple change, but it makes sense and is long overdue.

HB2431: Delegate Rupie Phillips bill cleans up the CCW process, and allows for people with old and expunged disqualifying convictions a path to restoring their Second Amendment rights. 

A NOTE TO VETERANS ON 2431:

 This bill contained a provision to exempt West Virginia’s veterans from the CCW permit fees. This exemption was stripped from the bill by the West Virginia Senate. Senator Corey Palumbo stood in the Senate chamber crying the blues about the poor county sheriffs who will lose so much money. Corey Palumbo doesn’t mind taking money from the pockets of those who have signed a blank check for their very lives on his behalf, because sheriff Snuffy needs a new Glock.

SB435: This bill has a long and twisting story. This bill originally started life as Herb Snyder’s home rule bill. But as most of us know, Delegate Rupie Phillips introduced HB2760 which is statewide preemption. 2760 passed the house near unanimously, and then was unceremoniously killed by Senators Kessler, Snyder, and Palumbo. It looked as if all hope was lost, until home rule passed from the senate to the house. In the house, Delegate Patrick Lane amended the home rule bill to include the full text of 2760. This placed the senate in a bit of a pickle. If they wanted home rule (and my, did they) they got preemption too for home rule cities. 

The senate hated it, and they hated us for it, but they swallowed their pride and passed SB435 with home-rule cities preempted from nearly all gun ordinances.

What will remain:

  • Home rule cities may enact carry bans on city hall and municipal courts.
  • Home rule cities may prohibit open carry on city parks and other city property, but they MAY NOT prohibit concealed carry with a permit.
  • Home rule cities may not restrict how many, or how often you can buy firearms.
  • Home rule cities may not restrict the sale of firearms.

Governor Tomblin has expressed some displeasure in the media regarding preemption and home rule. We expect he will sign all of the gun bills from this session, as failure to do so may be political suicide. I doubt he’s willing to fall on his sword on preemptoin for Corey Palumbo and Danny Jones, but we will see.

And now a sad note about every single one of these bills. And I write this with tears welling in my eyes.

 Each of these bills over the past six years was originally written and pushed at various times by WVCDL founder, past president, treasurer, and legislative director, the late Jim Mullins. Wherever Jim is, I hope he is proud of what we have done with his organization.

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20 COMMENTS

  1. You have the 2nd Amendment RIGHT to SHOOT ANY government gestapo agent storming your house!

    • This is true in Indiana, actually. But if you’re going to take the particular approach to trolling that you are taking you should work a little harder to look like a real 2A advocate. Poe’s law doesn’t apply very well here because we aren’t fundamentalists and thus your parody of us is easily discernible from real advocacy.

  3. I am not entirely sure what they mean by “home rule cities” but otherwise most of these seem like a good step forward.

    • I’m going to guess it’s something along these lines:

      The Home Rule City Act was enacted by the Michigan Legislature as Public Act 279 of 1909. This statute provides the framework by which a new city may become incorporated and provide for its own government by adopting a city charter. It also provides for the method by which an existing city may amend or revise its city charter.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Rule_Cities_Act_(Michigan)

    • The crux in WV is that a few cities in our state have enacted very restrictive
      gun control laws within their boundaries . This limits their ability to circumvent state and federal law .
      A recall vote on Joe Manchin and we will be on a roll .

  5. Good going WV, common sense laws that wouldn’t quite make the grade in a facist state, Randy

    • In fairness, California! beat WV to the punch on HB2471. AB1645 was a California bill doing the same thing here. Amazingly it passed unanimously in the Assembly, though only 24-17 in the Senate. I think there is enough libertarianism bent left here (indeed, something people don’t understand about CA is that we are slightly different, both conservatives and liberals, than the East), to see it as a 4th amendment issue at least.

  7. Funny, northerners love to make fun of West Virginia as “backwards.” And yet, here we have the government of West Virginia showing it has greater trust and faith in its citizens than NY, CT, MD, MA, RI (and so on) do.

    Bravo WVA.

  8. You mean they are (were?) states where you can’t target shoot from your kitchen table? That’s BS.

  10. So, “passed by the legislature”. How many are signed into law?

    I’ll reserve enthusiasm until said point.

  12. Good to see that some of the eastern states are approaching Idaho’s respect for the 2nd Amendment. Now they need to work on prohibiting lawsuits from criminals that are shot while committing burglary or other felonies. And be sure to remove any “one gun a month” BS. And make anyone who builds a home/subdivision near an existing public shooting range financially responsible for any noise reduction they might want to occur on the range (amazing how that cuts down on the noise complaints).

  14. I agree but the 500 ft rule makes little sence if i want to practice from my porch an im miles away why does it matter?

  15. This article may be a bit old but I do believe they have updated the 500 ft rule. So now as long as the residence of any dwelling that is within the range is aware of (even if that is implied) or has given consent to the discharge of the firearm then you can legally shoot out behind your own home.

    So I hereby give my consent to me shooting behind my own dwelling (haha). Now I am legally covered under the law.

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