June 29, 2006 -- Last night Colorado Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave passed an amendment to an appropriations bill that stops the federal government from implementing the trigger lock provisions of the gun lawsuits liability bill passed by the NRA last year.

Second Amendment Caucus co-chair    Marilyn Musgrave offers amendment    on the House floor to remove the    Trigger Lock requirements imposed by    the NRA's Gun Lawsuits Liability    bill of 2005.

The Musgrave Amendment (an amendment to the Science, State, Justice, and Commerce Appropriations bill) will allow no funds to be made available (to the Justice Department) to carry out section 924(p) of title 18. This section is the penalties section relating to the new trigger lock law that says that every handgun sold, must be sold with a trigger lock.

The penalty for manufacturers, importers and licensed dealers who fail to provide a trigger lock with a sale of a handgun is:

· Suspension for not more than 6 months, or revoke license.

· Fine of not more than $2,500.

The trigger lock provision was part of the Firearms Manufacturers Protection bill that was signed into law on Oct. 26, 2005. The trigger lock provision took effect on April 24th, 2006.

Musgrave's amendment garnered 230 aye votes and 191 noes.

You can view the vote at http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll343.xml

Before the vote, it looked like the amendment might die because the NRA had not taken a position. When pressed by hill staffers, the NRA simply didn't take a position.

The NRA's reasoning for not getting involved was "our plate is just too full right now."

Full? Full doing WHAT? The reason the NRA didn't touch this -- they didn't even send an e-mail to members of Congress to ask for their vote on the amendment -- is because the NRA never wants to do anything they might not win, thus paralyzing themselves with fear. But if you ask a gun owner, more than anything else they want gun rights organizations to fight for their rights -- and fight hard.

This rationalization by the NRA is the very reason they have compromised so many times: capitol insiders predict "you can't possible win that issue", and so the NRA backs down.

Remember that early in 2005 the NRA claimed they would strip out these bad provisions after they passed the gun lawsuits liability bill in the Senate. Then, when the trigger lock provisions were added in the Senate, they claimed they HAD to pass this bill ASAP, and would strip the trigger lock provisions later. They put a full court press on Congress to pass a bill with trigger lock provisions, and dismissed them as meaningless.

Anyone who needs their firearm in a hurry, but has been fed the lie about trigger locks, won't call this capitulation on trigger locks meaningless.

This amendment was an attempt to undo what the NRA did in 2005 -- and it passed, despite the naysayers in the institutional gun lobby.

Now we need to get the same amendment attached to the appropriation in the Senate.

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