The National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) held its state conference in Bellevue, Neb. over the weekend at the Beardmore Event Center. Around 200 supporters of the second amendment turned up for a morning of speakers and panel discussions on gun rights and legislative action, particularly the recently-passed Constitutional Carry bill (LB77) in the Nebraska Unicameral.
The bill’s sponsor, Tom Brewer of district 34, was on hand to talk about it. The bill passed a round of voting last week after a filibuster and “a week of yelling at liberals,” Brewer said, with regard to his hoarse voice. The bill ultimately with support from a few Democrats and concessions made to the Omaha police union. Brewer had gone on a hike up Mount Kilimanjaro with them recently and credited his relationship with them for the bill’s passage.
Other speakers included state treasurer John Murante, who talked about ESG (environmental social governance) and backdoor efforts to create a list of gun owners through credit card companies. “When the Biden Administration took over, they got very creative on different ways that they could track purchases of guns,” Murante said. “You might recall one of their first ideas was to say that if you’re an American, and you have a bank account, and you have $600 coming into or out of that bank account over the course of the year, that the banks would have to report to the IRS every single transaction that you made over the course of a year. I became the first state treasurer in the country to say that if Congress passes that law, the state of Nebraska will not comply with it.”
The final speaker of the day was Sen. Pete Ricketts. Ricketts is also a co-sponsor of the “constitutional concealed carry reciprocity act,” a bill which would allow gun-owners to cross state lines. “Law-abiding gun owners can inadvertently run afoul of those laws while traveling,” RIcketts said, “so we’re trying to make this something where we don’t have those law-abiding citizens run into trouble.”
