Well, it certainly didn’t take long for Krayton Kerns’s crazy bill to start having an impact on law enforcement. Already, police have had to release a man who shot another man in the head because of this misguided legislation, designed to appeal to the fringe of the NRA and the one-man band of the Montana Shooting Sports Association:
Paxinos said that prior to passage of House Bill 228 authorities would have had probable cause to arrest Schmidt for assault with a weapon.
"I’ll have to do the investigation while the guy is free to move around," said Paxinos, who along with other county attorneys opposed House Bill 228 during the legislative session.
It’s not like the legislators who voted for this absurd bill didn’t know exactly what was going to happen. Montana County attorneys, law enforcement officers, editorialists, and even the occasional blogger all pointed out the obvious: this law goes too far.
In the future, perhaps legislators should listen to the people who enforce the laws and deal with the consequences of crimes, rather than ill-informed zealots who don’t represent the views of average Montanans, even those who own guns.
Article by Don Pogreba
Don has written 1332 posts for us. He is an English and debate teacher in Helena, MT. When not writing here or working on debate handbooks, he is writing about educational issues at Prairie Pedagogue.
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"The play of (House Bill) 228 with the current law causes us some pause to do a much more thorough investigation to determine if we can charge anyone," Paxinos said.
Actually having solid evidence of a crime before infringing on someone's human rights by locking them up? Sounds like a good thing to me.
Yeah, defense of the rights of criminal suspects has certainly been a central belief of modern conservatism, hasn't it? Interesting that Krayton and the Gun Nuts are so concerned about the rights of people in cases like this.
As for "solid evidence," I'd say the guy with the bullet wound in his head probably qualifies.