By: Anthony Morelli
If this hadn’t been caught it would have been very bad for gun owners.
It was apparently a trick play to catch Republicans off-guard.
And it almost led to a major gun ban for millions of people.
Generally, if politicians want to pass a major bill that will affect society in a big way, the bill will be voted on in an up-or-down manner.
It is frowned upon to try to sneak such bills into a larger bill, like a state budget, in order to ram it through.
However, the governor of Rhode Island appears to be trying to do just that by sneaking an “assault weapons” ban into the upcoming budget for his state.
He is apparently hoping legislators will simply vote for the budget because they have to, and in doing so will pass the ban that he wants.
This is a dirty trick and one that Republicans should not fall for if they want to retain the support of gun owners in the state of Rhode Island.
If the governor wants an “assaults weapons” ban, then he should introduce the bill and get a straight up-or-down vote on it.
According to The Truth About Guns, “What do you do if you’re the chief executive of a state and you want to ban so-called ‘assault weapons,’ but you’ve never managed to get the legislature to do your dirty work for you? If you’re the governor of Rhode Island, you try to get such a ban by more backdoor means.
“According to an alert from Gun Owners of America (GOA), Rhode Island Democrat Gov. Daniel McKee recently inserted funding for a ban on many common semi-automatic firearms into his recently released FY 2026 budget proposal, causing alarm for Ocean State gun owners.”
If this was supposed to be a secret at first, which it’s not clear that it was, the cat is out of the bag.
The governor is now publicly addressing his plans to pass an “assault weapons” ban through the budget process.
Here is what he said: “Year after year I’ve stood here and asked the General Assembly to send an assault weapons ban to my desk. This year, I’m sending you a budget to the General Assembly for the first time (that) will include a ban on assault weapons. Let’s finally get this done.”
Rhode Island citizens deserve better than this, since apparently the governor is not going to allow a simple vote on the ban.
He is going to tie it into the budget process, which many legislators might feel pressured to vote for if there’s funding for their district in the budget.
The governor knows that will make it far more likely to pass, and that seems to be why he is pursuing this strategy instead of a more straightforward approach to the bill.
But this will rob citizens of the chance to see how their legislators vote on a standalone bill, and ultimately it could rob them of their Second Amendment freedoms too.