SB256 by Rodney Ellis: Unconstitutional, Unnecessary and Burdensome

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Published on Monday, 02 February 2015 08:00

This Bill is a fix desperately seeking a problem to solve when there is none!  Charles L. Cotton

Not long before taking the microphone on the Senate floor to admit that he thinks it is just fine to lie to voters to get elected, Senator Rodney Ellis, an F-rated Democrat from Houston, filed four more unnecessary and unconstitutional anti-gun bills. Each of these bills, the Four Horsemen of the Prevarication, will be discussed in separate articles.

 SB256 by Sen. Ellis would make it a Class A Misdemeanor for someone to possess or possess, transfer, loan, sell, or repair any magazine or other ammunition feeding device that holds more than twenty cartridges. This would subject law-abiding citizens to a year in jail and/or a $4,000 fine merely for possessing a magazine that meets this description. Each magazine would constitute a separate offense. Sen. Ellis exempted certain .22 rimfire firearms and of course this limitation would not apply to law enforcement or military personnel.

Even with F-rated Sen. Ellis’ longstanding aversion to Second Amendment rights, one must wonder why he would draft an absurd bill like SB256. Studies by the FBI and the U.S. Dept. of Justice have proven that the so-called high capacity magazine ban that was part of the infamous “Clinton Gun Ban” a/k/a the “Assault Weapons Ban” did not reduce crime. Why introduce a bill that would burden gun owners when the exact same provisions in federal law did not have any impact on crime? It is obvious Sen. Ellis’ motivation is not crime reduction but to attack law-abiding Texas gun owners. He would make criminals out of citizens for the mere possession of magazines knowing full well that they pose no threat to public safety. What kind of person would even think of doing something like this?

Sen. Ellis’s SB256 does not have a grandfather clause exempting magazines that are already in possession of citizens, meaning it would be unconstitutional on its face. Even the authors of the ineffective federal “Assault Weapons Ban” were aware of constitutional limitations so that bill included a grandfather clause that exempted both firearms and magazines. Surely the Senator did his homework before filing this Bill.

The Bottom Line: SB256 is unconstitutional and there is no problem for it to address. Its filing was just another out of touch political statement by a rabid anti-gun, anti-freedom Senator. One must wonder who he thinks will buy into this sham.