Effort To Put OK's Constitutional Carry Law To A Vote Fails Miserably

Moms Demand Action say they only want common-sense gun laws, but so far they haven’t really actually opposed a gun control measure as going too far. They do, however, find it within them to oppose any measure that liberalizes gun laws.

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A prime example is Oklahoma’s constitutional carry law.

The group opposed the law and sought to gather enough signatures on a petition to put it to a vote within the state. It did not go well for them.

A group seeking to stop a new law that would allow people in Oklahoma to openly carry firearms without training or a background check is acknowledging they fell short of the number of signatures needed for a statewide vote on the issue.

In a court filing on Thursday, an attorney for the group estimates they gathered between 30,000 and 50,000 signatures. They would have needed nearly 60,000 signatures from registered voters to qualify the question for the ballot.

In other words, they weren’t even close. The reason their estimated range is so broad is that people were dropping off signatures right up until the deadline. Despite that, though, they didn’t have enough to force a vote.

It’s almost like people in Oklahoma aren’t really interested in voting on the issue.

What’s especially hilarious is that there are usually some people who will sign a petition like this simply because they want to vote on the issue. They don’t actually support gun control necessarily, they just want the people to vote on anything and everything. So presumably, at least some of those signatures are people who would have voted in favor of constitutional carry anyway.

And they still couldn’t get enough support to get it on the ballot.

Further, we don’t know how many of those signatures weren’t valid for whatever reason. That’s normal when you gather signatures, which is why you always get far more than you need, just so you have some breathing room after a percentage of ballots are tossed.

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Well, at least in theory. You actually have to gather a sufficient number of signatures for it to matter.

They didn’t.

I’m not going to lie, this is hilarious to me. It’s hilarious because getting on the ballot should be far, far easier than actually winning. It’s a burden, sure, but they’d already lost in the legislature. This was their last shot and they had a chance. All they needed 60,000 signatures in a state of almost 4 million people. It shouldn’t have been that hard.

Yet, it was. They couldn’t manage it. Despite the resources of Moms Demand Action, a national group with money flowing freely apparently, they couldn’t get just 60,000 signatures.

To be fair, it’s Oklahoma. It’s not like the state is known for their anti-gun sentiment. While I expect you’d find more gun control supporters in Tulsa and Oklahoma City than you’d find in, say, Elk City or Weatherford, they still couldn’t gather enough signatures for a vote.

Maybe someday anti-gunners will learn that just because national polls say an idea is popular, it doesn’t mean that those numbers apply everywhere evenly. Especially on a topic like gun control.

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