Update: Rep. Pilkington says he won't motion to extract #SYG from committee and will instead meet with #arleg colleagues this afternoon (2/3/21) to discuss concerns they may have with the bill so they can "operate in an open manner."
Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee heard the infamous Stand Your Ground Bill, SB 24, and after almost three hours of heartfelt testimony against the bill, the committee voted it down.
So why are we still talking about it? Senator Bob Ballinger and Representative Pilkington are proving themselves to be sore losers, with plans of extracting it from the committee and sending it to the House for a floor vote today. This is something that hasn’t happened in the history of the House of Representatives, and only once in the Senate… and you guessed it, it was also an NRA bill.
Among the twenty-five individuals who spoke against the bill, representatives from the Arkansas Gun Owners Association also pleaded with the committee to vote no. Later, in a Facebook post, they called out Ballinger and Pilkington.
“We have attempted every way possible to correct this Bill in private just to have the middle finger shoved in our face…” the post said.
That’s right, the middle finger, as if the Arkansas Legislature is a middle school playground. Our leaders and lawmakers should act with more decency and less child-like behavior.
The organization did not go into more detail about which of the two legislators acted with such malice, but they went on to address the threatening language that Ballinger and Pilkington are using, as well as the NRA, to pass this harmful bill.
This begs the question, are they really pushing this bill for their constituents, or is it for their own special interest?
