S. 190 is just another gun control law. S. 190 will make South Carolina essentially mirror federal law with regards to lifetime firearms disability law, which will make the likes of Charles Schumer, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi very happy.
Existing South Carolina law only makes it illegal for a person who has committed a crime of violence to possess a handgun in SC. But, S. 190 will now make it a felony for a person who has committed a non violent crime to possess any firearm or ammunition. Exceptions are made for crimes designed to regulate business or crimes that are a state misdemeanor with a two year or less possible imprisonment.
S. 190 is simply another step in the march towards gun control. S. 190 is especially troublesome because we now have SC state politicians moving to the gun control side of the political spectrum.
Why should a person who has paid their debt to society continue to be denied their constitutional rights and turned into second class citizens? Why is it the gun control crowd only wants to deny the constitutional 2nd Amendment right to those who have committed crimes and served their sentences, but not any of the other constitutional rights?
Just think how effective law enforcement could be if the police were no longer required to show probable cause before entering a former criminal's home to search for evidence. Yet, the gun control crowd never proposes denying a former criminal those constitutional rights. Why not?
The answers are that gun control is not about guns or crime or protecting the children, it is all about control.
If a former criminal is no longer a danger to society, then denying him his constitutional rights and making him a second class citizen is wrong. If a former criminal is too dangerous to be put back into society, then that person should continue to be incarcerated.
Fighting crime is just an excuse used to pass more gun control. The federal government's own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report stating there was insufficient evidence to show any of the gun control laws in existence had saved any lives. Dr. John Lott has published research showing gun control laws have actually allowed violent crime rates to remain higher than the rates would have been had the gun control laws not been in existence. Thus, gun control has not been proven to be an effective method to fight crime, and gun control could actually be making violent crime worse.
While the net effect of S. 190 is negligible because federal law already punishes those that S. 190 will punish, it is still something we should oppose on principle. If the US Supreme Court's Heller decision is ever used to overturn federal gun control laws, we will then be faced with having to overturn state gun control laws like S. 190. We need to oppose S. 190 now before S. 190 becomes another brick in the wall of gun control.