CARSON CITY, NEVADA — State Rep. Tom Thompaulsen (R-NV) has proposed a new bill in his state that would make “open carry” in his state illegal.
The bill comes in response to the kerfuffle at a rally in Reno over the weekend that led to Secret Service agents rushing Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump off the stage. Agents were responding to shouts of “Gun!” from the rally audience, however no gun or weapon was found on the man who was carried out by more Secret Service agents. The man said in subsequent interviews with the media that he was a Republican and carrying a protest sign that read, “REPUBLICANS AGAINST TRUMP.”
“Clearly we have moved beyond a time that the Founders could have envisioned,” Rep. Thompaulsen told the media outside the Nevada capital building, “and we need to adopt some controls on the open carry of cardboard signs.”
Thompaulsen told reporters the incident in Reno showed “with extreme clarity” that “some people just can’t be trusted with their First Amendment rights.”
“That man just walks into a Trump rally,” Thompaulsen said, “filled with good, innocent, American racists, xenophobes, and rubes with that sign. What if he had gotten a chance to raise that sign? How many of those people would have been viciously subjected to his dissenting opinions? If that’s not the definition of terrorism, I don’t know what is.”
There are many factors that Thompaulsen said his bill has been written to account for. He says that while technically he maybe proposing limitations on the First Amendment, and that he acknowledges that people panicked for “essentially no reason” at the rally, that something still has to be done about protest signs.
“What if that sign was corrugated,” Thompaulsen asked, “or what if had been written in blue marker instead of black? Don’t blue markers matter as much as black markers do? All of this is why we need Donald Trump as our president, to make the tough calls about free speech, because no one is as qualified as a constitutional as the guy who made ‘You’re Fired!’ a trademarked slogan for his reality TV show, know what I mean?”
So far, Rep. Thompaulsen says he doesn’t have any co-sponsors for his bill, but he’s sure some will come along.
“If I can convince my fellow Republicans this bill disproportionately impacts minorities and women in the state of Nevada,” Thompaulsen boasted, “I think I can get every single one of my colleagues to sponsor it with me.”
This is a developing story.
Follow James on Twitter @JamboSchlarmbo.
