Gun bill shot down in blaze of ignorance 

 Wow. Talk about power.
  The NRA now runs the Nebraska Legislature even when it’s not trying to run it.
  On Friday, a severely watereddown bill intended to address gun violence failed to win a majority vote in second-round debate.
  The vote was 20-20. But 25 votes are needed to advance to the final round of debate.
  This was not State Sen. Brad Ashford’s original LB 958. That measure would have required guns to be sold with trigger locks and required owners to report the theft of a gun within 48 hours.
  There was no way these crazy ideas were getting past this session of the 100th Nebraska Rifle Assembly. Also removed from the legislation was the establishment of a commission to identify inherently dangerous guns that should be banned. As the bill devolved, Ashford made great effort to seek out advice from NRA-affiliated gun experts, including one NRA gun safety instructor who had called me. The weapons expert pointed out flaws in Ashford’s early legislation and offered to talk with Ashford about making any legislation more effective without infringing on gun rights.
  I later heard from several NRA members who were impressed with how Ashford actively pursued weapons instructors and other knowledgeable NRA members in an attempt to create effective legislation that might be palatable to enough state senators.
  The final bill called for a State Crime Commission study of gun violence and illegal firearms trafficking. That’s it.
  But it was shot down.
  Why?
  Sen. Russ Karpisek of Wilber explained last week.
  Karpisek said that once alerted by the NRA regarding the first version of the bill, his constituency flooded him with mail admonishing him to vote against the legislation.
  “They got a card from the NRA, and now they just see the bill number,” Karpisek said. “I said I’d vote against the bill, and I had to keep voting against the bill.”
  Even though the NRA had dropped its earlier opposition to the bill, taking a courageous “neutral stance” on the version that was nonetheless defeated.
  Meaning senators still were instructed by a mob of angry NRA members to kill the bill even though the mob obviously didn’t even know what the legislation said or that the NRA itself no longer opposed the revised bill.
  Note to NRA cranks in this state: If you’re going to be politically active based on the doctrine of your religion, at least know what that doctrine is.
  Beyond that, our elected officials should know that some loud minorities of their constituency will be strident in their stupidity. That’s why we have representative government.
  We elect our representatives to make wise decisions based on the needs of their constituency combined with the information they garner in the hopefully information- rich setting of the legislative debate process. If we’re unhappy with their work, we don’t re-elect them.
  Instead, in Nebraska, not only do we have a Legislature run by whichever lobbies have the resources to send the most spam and junk mail to their minions, we now have a direct government led by the ignorance of a rowdy few.
  After all, Karpisek went with the mob even knowing that the mob didn’t know what it thought it knew.
  As our 100th Nebraska Legislature draws to a close, it’s becoming clearer what form of democracy we’ll have in 21st-century Nebraska: a government by the loudest and dumbest for the lobby with the best direct-mail campaign.
  Surely, exactly what the Founding Fathers intended.