Good-old-boy politics is conventional wisdom, but it will never pass constitutional carry.
This seems to be a lesson that is lost on some of my conservative colleagues. Take, for instance, Rep. Stewart Jones’ unhinged rant which he published in an email newsletter, in which he goes off on me for the way I’ve fought to pass constitutional carry. You can read it for yourself here.
I have no interest or desire to fight with Stewart. I simply expect him to do what he promised to do when he ran for office: push constitutional carry through, not a substitute bill.
The things he says don’t bother me in the slightest. I wish he understood what it will take to make the establishment relinquish control over your rights, and Lord knows I’ve tried to get that through to him over the last two years.
However, I do not want you to be discouraged about the path forward, so lest there be any confusion on your part, I am compelled to set the record straight below.
“For the past six years he has filed Constitutional Carry with NO advancement...So far, the strategy hasn’t worked to even get a serious committee meeting on Constitutional Carry.”
For seven years now, Speaker Jay Lucas and his minions have fought tooth and nail to block the bill. I tried playing nice. It didn’t work[1].
“The strategy” has only been necessary because Republican leaders who control the House committee process oppose the bill, have refused to give the bill a fair hearing[2,3].
If Stewart had bothered to check the record, he would have known that constitutional carry did indeed get a subcommittee hearing in 2015[4], and PASSED.
“This has led to him lying to people and throwing up amendments in an unorganized attempt to force a vote on Constitutional Carry….When politicians like Hill use strategies that attack allies and not policy - it becomes personal for legislators and no longer about the policy.”
When I filed an amendment to add constitutional carry to the church carry bill late last session, the Speaker and Majority Leader sacrificed an innocuous church carry bill to block a vote on constitutional carry[5,6].
Stewart blamed me for killing the church carry bill, publicly denounced my actions[7,8], and disassociated himself[9].
The accusation that I lie to people comes from Majority Leader “Slick” Gary Simrill, a master of spin and deceit. He has been repeating this line since 2017, when I caught him in a string of fibs about the gas tax[10,11,12,13], the state budget[14], and more[15]. Why is Stewart repeating this talking point?
“You may also have gotten calls and emails from outside dark money groups that are pushing Hill’s narrative. They are even making false claims that I don’t support Constitutional Carry - simply because I have a different strategy than Hill.”
Stewart is referring to Young Americans for Liberty, the conservative student organization that vaulted him into office with boots on the ground that moved the needle enough to help him win an outright majority in a four-way special primary in 2019[16]—and now they are “dark money?!” This is a favorite label of the RINO establishment[17,18] for anyone who goes after legislators who threaten gun rights, and it’s a clue that Stewart didn’t write this.
Over the last 4 months, Stewart distanced himself from everyone connected with YAL, did not attend the national YAL conference in December 2020, and ignored all invitations from YAL, NAGR, and me to collaborate on plans to pass constitutional carry.
In January, Stewart made himself YAL’s top target when he announced at a legislative panel they hosted that we “have to pass open carry first”[19]. This is the very lie that leadership keeps repeating to kill constitutional carry this session.
“The bottom line is that Jonathon Hill has alienated himself to a point which it is hard for him to get nine people to second a roll call or recorded vote on anything.”
In reality, I successfully forced key roll call votes on constitutional carry in 2015[20], 2017[21], and 2019[22,23]. I came close to getting another in 2020 when the church carry bill came up.
Just in the last two weeks, I was able to get multiple roll call votes on key issues[24,25]. This notion that I have zero support on the House floor is simply not factual.
“Hill is so toxic to advancing our cause that there’s two Constitutional Carry bills.”
And that’s supposed to be a bad thing? On the contrary, this actually demonstrates the growing support in the legislature for constitutional carry! There are actually three other bills: Sen. Shane Martin[26], Sen. Larry Grooms[27], and Rep. Bobby Cox[28] have all filed similar bills on their own. This is a very good thing!
Numerous legislators who opposed constitutional carry have been voted out, resigned, or retired, because I forced them to vote on the record and exposed their opposition[29].
“The left has used incremental tactics for years to advance their agenda, and it has worked.”
This is a tired old excuse that do-nothing politicians give for doing nothing.
Stewart doesn’t actually understand “incrementalism,” which is asking for 150% of what you want, and settling for 75% of what you asked for. Meanwhile, just by fighting the fight, you grow your movement in numbers and influence, and you keep picking fights over and over again as many times as it takes until you get 100% of what you want. That’s how the left does incrementalism[39,40].
Stewart wants us to do the exact oppose: ask for 50% of what we want, and try to make leadership like us enough to give us the other 50% at some unspecified point in the future. That’s not incrementalism, it’s bad negotiating, and it’s naive.
There is an organized plan to pass constitutional carry, and it is working. It’s the same strategy that has gotten Constitutional Carry passed in South Dakota, Mississippi, and many other states. Those battles weren’t fought and won overnight, and neither will ours be.
Stewart doesn’t have to understand it. He doesn’t even have to like it. But if he stands by and squanders our best opportunity yet to get constitutional carry passed, it’s going to be awfully hard for him to explain to District 14.