Kentucky: Legislative Update

[Charlie T Waite]

The Kentucky 2021 legislative session is under way and these two bills in the General Assembly are of great importance to the future of our constitutional rights.

Pro-Gun

House Bill 175 prohibits financial institutions from discriminating against firearm businesses. Anti-gun banks and their executives have expressed interest in denying services to the firearm industry as a way to further their political agenda and impose gun control by making such business impossible when legislatures won’t bend to their will. This bill requires banks to evaluate firearm businesses like any other businesses and to consider financial risk rather than ideology in their decisions on providing services.

Anti-Gun

Senate Bill 229 allows the seizure of an individual’s property and suspension of their Second Amendment rights on baseless accusations without a hearing or other opportunity for the person to be heard in court. This is a “guilty until proven innocent” scheme and places undue burden on a person who may not have the financial means to hire an attorney, to do so in order to “prove innocence.”

A person subject to a suspension of a Constitutional right should be entitled to high evidentiary standards, an opportunity to be heard, and the right to face his or her accusers. Civil liberties advocates from across the political spectrum have expressed concerns on these “red flag” schemes and how the procedure might lead to abuses of the process because of insufficient due process protections. Kentucky already has laws in place to address mental health issues while going through due process and these efforts to ignore due process do not improve public safety.