Right to Carry while hunting goes to floor for a vote!

Kentucky: Self-Defense While Hunting Legislation Heads To The House Floor!
Please Call Your State Representative Today!

Today, Wednesday, February 25, House Bill 419 passed the State House Judiciary Committee by a vote of 12 to 2. HB 419, sponsored by State Representative Robert Damron (D-39), would permit citizens to carry firearms for self-defense while engaged in hunting, fishing, trapping, and other activities. The bill also clarifies that citizens may do what is necessary for self-defense in the case of a wild animal attack, without fear of unjustified prosecution. The NRA worked with Representative Damron to amend the bill in order to address legitimate concerns raised by the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. HB 419 now heads to the House floor for a vote.
Please contact the your State Representative TODAY and respectfully voice your support for HB 419. For contact information or help identifying your State Representative, please click here.

Federal appeals court affirms right to possess firearms in cars

This is a significant decision for many reasons, and will undoubtedly have national implications. It also affirms Kentucky's law that allows citizens to keep firearms in their cars. Great stuff!

From the NRA -

Major Victory for American Workers Right to Self-Defense

Fairfax, Va. – Today, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously in support of allowing employees to store legally owned firearms in locked, private motor vehicles while parked in employer parking lots. This decision upholds NRA-backed legislation passed in 2004.

“This is a victory for the millions of American workers who have been denied the right to protect themselves while commuting between their homes and their workplace,” said NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre. “This effort was aimed at skirting the will of the American people, and the intent of legislatures across this country while eviscerating Right-to-Carry laws. This ruling is a slap at the corporate elitists who have no regard for the constitutional rights of law abiding American workers.”

In March 2004, the Oklahoma legislature passed an amendment holding employers criminally liable for prohibiting employees from storing firearms in locked vehicles on company property. A number of corporations subsequently filed suit in opposition to the new laws, alleging they were: unconstitutionally vague; an unconstitutional taking of private property; and preempted by various federal statutes. The lower court ruled in favor of the injunction.

“This issue was contrived by the gun control lobby who goaded corporations into doing their dirty work for them,” said Chris W. Cox, NRA chief lobbyist. “However, this ruling is a vindication for every hardworking and lawful man and woman whose basic right to self-defense was taken away on a whim by corporate lawyers. NRA is prepared to defend this right and to ensure the safety of every American worker.”

In October 2008, Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry and Attorney General Drew Edmondson appealed to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals the lower court decision to strike down the NRA-backed worker protection laws. Today’s proceedings handed down by Circuit Judges Paul J. Kelly, Bobby R. Baldock, and Michael W. McConnell reversed the lower court’s grant of a permanent injunction.

The right to be armed affirmed in Wisconsin

Amazing. A man in his own yard, breaking no laws, and the police feel compelled to arrest him at gunpoint.

West Allis Judge Says Man Could Carry Gun...
Associated Press - February 17, 2009
WEST ALLIS, Wis. - A West Allis municipal judge said a resident was within his rights to carry a gun while planting a tree on his property.
Judge Paul Murphy found Brad Krause not guilty Tuesday of disorderly conduct in a case that has drawn the interest of gun rights advocates.
"The reason people are upset about this is it's not about guns. It's about civil liberties. And we obviously have a property issue," Krause said after the hearing. "There was no warrant issued, no exigent circumstances, no permission to enter the property, yet the police stormed in with guns drawn and put my life at risk."
(read the whole story here)

The raffle is over, and a new one begun

This weekend at the RK shows gun show in Lexington we sold the last of the raffle tickets and immediately conducted the prize drawing.

(KC3 president Kraig Keller presents the AR to Faron Coulter while board member Robby Robinson looks on)

Our congratulations to Faron Coulter for winning the S&W AR-15 and M&P .40 pistol combination.
As soon as this drawing was done we started our new raffle. The prize this time is an AR15 in the M4 style made by Del-Ton industries - you can see one like it here. (We should also tell you that the price on the web page is much less than they're selling for now!)

Tickets are $4 each or 3 for $10, with a limit of 1500 to be sold. They're already going fast so if you want to be in on this drawing don't wait. Either order by mail or see us at the next gun shows in Lexington and Louisville.
This is a great prize - a very nice AR made by a company with long experience in supplying parts and material to the AR industry - with great odds of winning. And, it's a good way to support KC3 in our efforts to protect YOUR rights.

Urgent alert from NRA - your help needed to reform right to carry legislation!

Kentucky Right-to-Carry Reform Measure to be Heard on Wednesday, February 25! Please Stand-Up and Make Your Voices Heard
The House Judiciary Committee will hear House Bill 419 as early as Wednesday, February 25.

HB 419, sponsored by State Representative Robert Damron (D-39), would permit hunters to carry firearms and/or deadly weapons for self-defense of themselves as well as others during hunting, fishing, trapping, and other activities.

This pro-gun bill will also prohibit Fish and Wildlife Resources from publishing any administrative regulations restricting the rights provided within this bill.

Please contact the your State Representative and the members of the House Judiciary Committee TODAY and respectfully voice your support for HB 419. Your State Representative can be reached by phone at (502) 564-8100. Contact information for the committee can be found below.

House Judiciary Committee

State Representative John Tilley (D-8)
(502) 564-8100 Ext. 658

State Representative Joseph Fischer (R-68)
(502) 564-8100 Ext. 742

State Representative Darryl Owens (D-43)
(502) 564-8100 Ext. 685

State Representative Brent Yonts (D-15)
(502) 564-8100 Ext. 686

State Representative Jesse Crenshaw (D-77)
(502) 564-8100 Ext. 620

State Representative Kelly Flood (D-75)
(502) 564-8100 Ext. 675

State Representative Jeff Hoover (R-83)
(502) 564-0521

State Representative Thomas Kerr (R-64)
(502) 564-8100 Ext. 694

State Representative Stan Lee (R-45)
(502) 564-8100 Ext. 698

State Representative Mary Lou Marzian (D-34)
(502) 564-8100 Ext. 643

State Representative Harry Moberly (D-81)
(502) 564-8100 Ext. 607

State Representative Tom Riner (D-41)
(502) 564-8100 Ext. 606

State Representative Steven Rudy (R-1)
(502) 564-8100 Ext. 637

State Representative David Watkins (D-11)
(502) 564-8100 Ext. 700

State Representative Robin Webb (D-96)
(502) 564-8100 Ext. 684

Copyright 2009, National Rifle Association of America, Institute for Legislative Action.
This may be reproduced. It may not be reproduced for commercial purposes.

There's a new law(yer) in town

The board of directors has contracted with a major Kentucky law firm to represent us in our efforts to protect your right to self-defense.
We met Monday with the young man who'll be representing KC3 and discussed the problems of which we're currently aware, as well as those issues that we'd like to address in future.
The first problem we're going to tackle is a situation where a company is reportedly violating state law by prohibiting employees from possessing firearms in their private vehicles in company parking lots. We'll be working with our attorney and possibly the Kentucky Attorney General to correct this alleged violation.
The acquisition of legal representation is a significant step forward for KC3 as it allows us to take on some of the corporate and governmental entities which have previously been willing to ignore our attempts to correct their misconduct.
If you know of any illegal activities, signage or policies anywhere in the state that discriminate against CCDW permit holders or otherwise infringe on our right to self-defense please contact us, and let us go to work on your behalf.

There's hope for the future, it seems

We had the pleasure of attending a meeting of the Louisville Young Republicans (web site here)last night at their headquarters.
We were invited to participate in a panel discussion about the 2nd Amendment by JD Sparks, the local NRA election action representative. The panel included Gene Smith, a former chief of police in Louisville, Barry Laws from the Open Range and Charles Riggs from KC3.
The exchange was lively and informative. Perhaps the best and most encouraging thing to come out of it was to see so many young people taking an active interest in their country, their government and their rights. In an age when there are so many forces working to change the very fabric of our nation, it's crucial to the future of our republic that young men and women become activists in their own behalf, working to ensure that our kids are properly educated about our traditions and our foundation.
We appreciate the invitation to participate in the discussion and look forward to working with the Young Republicans in future.

Our web page is changing

In the next few weeks you're going to see major changes in our web page at www.kc3.com
We've conferred with our new ISP and web designer, and are going to be stripping down our traditional web page to just some bare basic functions. There will be one page from which you can select a few basic functions. The rest of the pages will be archived while we catalog them and make decisions about content and design.
But we're going to be making some significant additions to that single page that will be your portal to KC3 while we're in transition to the new site. You'll be able to sign up for e-mail alerts, to join KC3 or to renew your membership and to get news feeds. We'll also continue to maintain information about reciprocity on the site.
We'll use this blog for day-to-day business and timely information, and to give us a way to solicit your comments and input.
So keep your eye on the web site, and please contact us via the comments on this blog to give us your ideas on what you'd like to see us keep in the site, as well as what you could do without. We want our site to be a lean, efficient source of information for all the CCDW holders in Kentucky and the nation. Thanks!

More about the annual meeting

Don't forget to mark your calendars for the KC3 annual meeting on May 9th at the Open Range in Crestwood, Kentucky.
The doors will open at 1100 (11 AM) and we'll start checking people in at that time. Lunch will start at 1200 (noon), which is when we will open the meeting. There will be discussions and door prized drawings during the meal. The business meeting will start at 1300 (1 PM).
We are doing our best to ensure that this meeting is well-organized and that everything goes on schedule. It is essential that you make sure that your membership is up to date. If it's not, you'll be required to renew it at that time in order to participate in the meeting.
A new requirement this year is that you MUST send in an RSVP to let us know that you'll be attending in order to reserve a place for yourself at lunch. Those persons who do NOT make prior arrangements will NOT be able to eat at this meeting. They can attend but we won't have extra food to feed them. Members can bring their family members with them as well, but not without making arrangements for them with us.
You can email us via the "contact us" page on our web site at www.kc3.com, or send a snail-mail to us at our PO box in Frankfort, which you'll also find our on contact page.
We're making this change so that we can plan appropriately for the number of people who'll be in attendance. This is the sort of planning that any major organization employs for their meetings and we're doing our best to be efficient in our utilization of resources.
There will be more information on this blog in the weeks ahead, and we'll have a complete article about it in the March newsletter.
We look forward to seeing you there!

A series worth reading

This is a three-part series of articles about the right to carry nation-wide and the right to self-defense - worth reading and thinking about - you can find it here.

Here's an excerpt -

"The genius of concealed carry is that thugs in any given neighborhood are entirely uncertain as to who is armed, and who will likely respond with lethal force when the thug creates the grave danger aggression. Here is another one of those things the anti-gun movement does not tell the average layman in the so-called gun debates, cases of grave danger which number in the millions thanks to one dynamic. Most thugs know very well how a rape, a robbery or a mayhem can rapidly deteriorate into a case of no witnesses. Refusing to be a victim of this sort of violent crime - and being able to make your refusal stick - can make all the difference in the world, your world."

A nice dose of reality in the post-modern world

Concealed Carry Permits Are Life Savers
By Rep. Cliff Stearns - 01/26/2009

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=30405

The right to bear arms is more than a Constitutional right: every human being has the natural unalienable right to self-defense. Cicero said 2,000 years ago, “If our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right.”

The U.S. Constitution, the constitutions of 44 states, common law, and the laws of all 50 states recognize the right to use arms in self-defense. Right to carry laws respect the right to self-defense by allowing individuals to carry concealed firearms for their own protection.

So many liberal politicians and self-appointed experts want to keep honest Americans from having access to firearms, even though, since 2003, in states which allow concealed carry, violent crime rates have been lower than anytime since the mid-1970s. The reverse logic of this "knee jerk" reaction is astounding and has lead to an outright assault on our basic Constitutional and natural rights. These misguided policies to keep firearms out of the hands of law-abiding citizens literally mean a death sentence for thousands of Americans.

Look at the facts. According to a study by criminologist Gary Kleck of Florida State University, “[R]obbery and assault victims who used a gun to resist were less likely to be attacked or to suffer an injury than those who used any other methods of self-protection or those who did not resist at all.” In approximately 2.5 million instances each year, someone uses a firearm, predominantly a handgun, for self defense in this nation.

In research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice, in which almost 2,000 felons were interviewed, 34% of felons said they had been “scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim" and 40% of these criminals admitted that they had been deterred from committing a crime out of fear that the potential victim was armed.

Allowing law-abiding people to arm themselves offers more than piece of mind for those individuals -- it pays off for everybody through lower crime rates. Statistics from the FBI’s Uniformed Crime Report of 2007 show that states with right-to-carry laws have a 30% lower homicide rate, 46% lower robbery, and 12% lower aggravated assault rate and a 22% lower overall violent crime rate than do states without such laws. That is why more and more states have passed right-to-carry laws over the past decade.

In 1987, my home state of Florida enacted a “shall issue” law that has become the model for other states. Anti-gun groups, politicians and the news media predicted the new law would lead to vigilante justice and “Wild West” shootouts on every corner.

But since adopting a concealed carry law Florida’s total violent crime rate has dropped 32% and its homicide rate has dropped 58%. Floridians, except for criminals, are safer due to this law. And Florida is not alone. Texas’ violent crime rate has dropped 20% and homicide rate has dropped 31%, since enactment of its 1996 carry law.

Another study makes the moral case for expanding and enhancing right-to-carry laws. A report by John Lott, Jr. and David Mustard of the University of Chicago released in 1996 found "that allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes and it appears to produce no increase in accidental deaths." Further, the Lott-Mustard study noted, "If those states which did not have right-to-carry concealed gun provisions had adopted them in 1992, approximately 1,570 murders; 4,177 rapes; and over 60,000 aggravate assaults would have been avoided yearly."

Think about it. Nearly 8,000 of our fellow citizens have died between 1992 and 1996 because of the irrational fear that law-abiding Americans would abuse their right to self defense. In fact concealed carry permit holders are more law-abiding than the rest of the public. For example, Florida, which has issued more carry permits than any state has issued 1.36 million permits, but revoked only 165 (0.01%) due to gun crimes by permit-holders.

Laws allowing the concealed carrying of a firearm are on the books in 48 states, in some form. Two-thirds of Americans live in states with right-to-carry laws, their respective state houses and governors recognizing their fundamental right to self-defense. But let me pose a question. Should your natural right to self defense and your Constitutional right to bear arms end when you cross a state line? I think not.

That is why I, along with Representative Rich Boucher (D-Va.) introduced H.R. 197, the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act. Our legislation proposes a federal law that would entitle any person with a valid state-issued concealed carry permit to carry in any other state, as follows: In a state that issues carry permits, its laws would apply. In states that don’t issue carry permits, the Federal law providing a "bright-line" standard would permit carrying in places other than police stations; courthouses; public polling places; meetings of state, county, or municipal governing bodies; schools; passenger areas of airports; etc. The bright-light standard in itself is not a license -- the individual would still have to possess a valid state permit issued by their state of residence. It doesn't make sense to me for Americans to forfeit their safety because they happen to be on vacation or on a business trip. This legislation would greatly enhance the safety of this nation's ever-increasing mobile society.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote, "No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." Our society is a violent society. However, the innocent deserve access to the tools they need to defend themselves. By passing H.R. 197, we can help reduce the carnage wrought by armed criminals. Let's give those who decide to take the responsibility of possessing a concealed carry permit a fighting chance anywhere in America.

(Mr. Stearns, a Republican, represents the 6th District of Florida in the U.S. House of Representatives.)

This won't happen in Kentucky

When we were working on passing HB40 one of the things that we fought to prevent was public access to the names of CCDW permit holders.
We knew that in other states the newspapers had published the names AND addresses of those with permits. We were successful, which is why the ONLY way that anyone outside of law enforcement can get the names of permit holders is to BUY them - ALL of them, without any addresses or other identifying information. Since the press are cheap and want the state to give them this free, they've not yet been willing to fork over the $60,000+ dollars for all the names of persons to whom permits were ever issued.
But in Tennessee they don't have that protection and one of their newspapers, the Commercial Appeal, now has a search engine on their web site that allows you to put in the name of a citizen, and it will then tell you if they have a permit, and where they live! You can find it here.
This is an outrage, and we hope that the good people of Tennessee will do something about it immediately!
KC3 will continue to work to ensure that this doesn't happen here. Bet on it.

Reciprocity Map - February 2009

(click for larger image)

This is the newest version of the map showing where you may carry concealed using a Kentucky CDWL. The red states are those that DON'T recognize or permit CCDW.
Note the text for an explanation of the yellow states, and click on the map for a larger version.