Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Dogs and Cats Living Together

Life is so full of surprises. The New Mexico State Legislature funded a World Peace Conference which will take place in Santa Fe. I never heard about this and I am kinda proud of the Legislators for doing this. They came up with 420K to sponsor this conference. It will be held at the State Capitol September 22-24, 2006. It might be the first time a state legislature has done this.

Now for the really amazing part. The appropriations legislation was sponsored by none other than Senator Shannon Robinson of Albuquerque. You remember him, he is also the sponsor of the infamous 'concealed weapons' legislation that easily passed in our legislature. I wonder if people will be allowed to carry concealed weapons into the conference. Probably not, I think that law prohibits concealed weapons in government buildings. But not to worry, you can carry them into Walmarts, movie theaters and churches.

Actually, Shannon is a guy I really like but he and I went at it when I was Mayor and tried to ban concealed weapons in Albuquerque. I failed in that, but I did get a baseball stadium built and I assume you can carry concealed weapons into that facility too.

But thanks for the Peace Conference Shannon, Really!

Meanwhile the National Rifle Association called me this morning to say they received my responses to their questionnaire. Just so you know, I am a gun owner and a sportsman and have been all my life. I enjoy trap and skeet shooting and target shooting with a large array of firearms. I was brought up with them. I don't hunt any more but I used to do quite a bit of it.

The NRA guy intimated that most of my responses were fine, except the ones opposing concealed weapons. Its all or nothing with them. I asked the representative, a very pleasant man, why concealed weapons were so important to them. I told him that wearing visible weapons was always legal here and I liked it that way. You could see who was armed and that was good as far as I was concerned. He said it just got to be a burden wearing unconcealed weapons because when members of the public saw them they called the police and the wearer ended up spread eagled on the sidewalk with the cops standing over them thinking they were crazy.

No comments: