by AZ Free Enterprise Club | May 6, 2023 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
Next week, the COVID-19 national public health emergency is set to terminate, three years or 1,166 days after it was initially declared. Here in Arizona, the state of emergency was ended by Governor Ducey on March 30, 2022, just over two years or 749 days after it was initially declared. For those counting, that’s quite a bit longer than the promised 15 days to “slow the spread.”
COVID-19 brought with it unprecedented uses and abuses of emergency powers in every state, Arizona included. Businesses were arbitrarily shut down. Workers were told their jobs were nonessential. People were prevented from going to church, couldn’t visit their dying parents and grandparents in hospitals, and kids were put in masks and barred from their schools. Many questioned how these mandates were even constitutional. Lawsuits were filed, but executive emergency authorities were largely upheld – including in Arizona.
That’s why our lawmakers are currently considering a critical constitutional amendment sponsored by Representative Chaplik, HCR2039, to reign in these powers, provide proper legislative oversight, and ensure checks and balances to protect the rights of individuals…
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by Michael Infanzon | May 3, 2023 | Opinion
By Michael Infanzon |
Recently, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding the use of stabilizing braces on firearms, with some people suggesting that these braces make guns deadlier and easier to use in violent attacks. This belief has been perpetuated by some anti-Second Amendment politicians and advocacy groups, including Giffords Law Center, which claims that shooters have used stabilizing braces to “skirt the National Firearms Act and commit horrific tragedies.” But this claim is both misleading and inaccurate.
First, let’s discuss what stabilizing braces actually are. These accessories can be attached to certain firearms, such as pistols, to provide additional support and stability when shooting. They were originally designed to help people with disabilities or injuries to safely and effectively use firearms. But they have since become popular among gun enthusiasts and sport shooters as well.
Giffords and others claim that stabilizing braces are somehow responsible for enabling shooters to commit violent acts. But there is no evidence to support this claim. In fact, the vast majority of shootings in the United States are committed with illegally obtained firearms, rather than legally purchased guns that have been modified with accessories like stabilizing braces.
Furthermore, the idea that stabilizing braces allow shooters to “skirt” the National Firearms Act (NFA) is also misleading. The NFA regulates certain types of firearms, such as machine guns and short-barreled rifles, and requires owners to register these weapons with the federal government and pay a tax. However, the use of stabilizing braces on pistols is not a violation of the NFA and does not allow individuals to avoid the registration and tax requirements.
In fact, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has issued guidance on the use of stabilizing braces, stating that “the use of a handgun stabilizing brace… does not change the classification of the firearm or impose any additional registration, licensing, or other requirements on the firearm or its owner.” The ATF has also made it clear that it will take action against individuals who use stabilizing braces to create a firearm that meets the definition of a short-barreled rifle, which is regulated under the NFA.
The claim made by Giffords and others that stabilizing braces make firearms deadlier and enable shooters to “skirt” the National Firearms Act is simply not true. There is no evidence to support this claim, and the ATF has made it clear that the use of stabilizing braces on pistols does not violate any federal laws or regulations. It’s important to separate fact from fiction when discussing issues related to firearms and public safety, and to base policy decisions on sound evidence and analysis.
That’s why the Arizona Citizens Defense League and the Arizona Firearms Industry Trade Association will continue to stand up for Arizona citizens and the firearm industry against unconstitutional laws and these types of lies.
Michael Infanzon is the Managing Partner for EPIC Policy Group and lobbies on behalf of groups like the Arizona Citizens Defense League and the Arizona Firearms Industry Trade Association.
by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Apr 30, 2023 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
A special election is taking place right now in Tucson, and even if you’re not from the city, you should pay attention. At first glance, Prop 412 appears to be nothing more than a new agreement between the City of Tucson and Tucson Electric Power (TEP) to renew the Franchise Agreement for another 25 years using the current 2.25% fee. But just like anything government bureaucrats put out there nowadays, you need to keep reading.
Along with the renewed agreement, Prop 412 would add a 0.75% “Community Resilience Fee” to fund the costs associated with building underground transmission facilities—and projects that support the City’s implementation of its Climate Action Plan. Ahhh, there it is. The agenda behind Prop 412 finally comes out. This isn’t about renewing a franchise agreement. It’s about forcing hardworking taxpayers to start funding the estimated $326 million it’s going to need to address Mayor Regina Romero’s so-called “climate emergency.”
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by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Apr 28, 2023 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
Americans are becoming neurotic worriers. COVID brought out the worst in us, as politicized medical leaders rushed us into a panic response that did far more harm than the disease itself without fundamentally affecting the net outcome of the pandemic.
But COVID is hardly the only example of Americans overestimating the dangers in their lives. We fret about everything from “Christian nationalism” arising due to court decisions protecting religious freedoms to alien-bearing UFOs.
Many Americans fear police officers kill unarmed Blacks by the thousands when the real number is about 10 to 20 annually. College students expect “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” to provide protection from exposure to opposing opinions and the supposed physical harm they are thought to cause.
Part of the problem of imagining all these boogeymen is that real threats can get lost in the shuffle. Impending financial doom, a rapidly changing world order, and millions of unassimilated aliens crossing our borders could all use better focused attention.
There is no better example of the trivial deflecting us from the critical than climate change. Sixty percent of the developed world truly believes that it will spell the end of humanity.
The World Health Organization declared climate change the most important public health issue of the 21st-century. The savants of the World Economic Forum named climate action failure as the greatest policy risk of the next decade.
Third World countries, unfortunately for them, find most of their foreign aid these days linked with resources to address climate change, rather than more pressing needs like economic development, malnutrition, clean water, education, or healthcare.
The fact that some degree of warming is real and related to human activity hardly justifies the catastrophe narrative. Facts derived from official sources tell a different story, for example, that 98 percent fewer people are dying from climate related disasters than a century ago.
Those who express doubt about any aspect of the catastrophe narrative are dubbed “climate deniers” by the mainstream and depicted as science-adverse Neanderthals. Joe Biden claimed he could change their minds just by showing them the climate-related fires he had personally witnessed.
About those fires, Joe. The undisputed fact is that 4.2% of the land in the world burned yearly in the early 1900s. Today it has fallen to 3% due to less heating from open fires, better forest management, and more resources available for fire suppression. Tilting at climate change will produce far less harm reduction from fires than will common sense, risk management, and prevention.
Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish economist, gives other reasons to doubt that climate change deserves its reputation as an existential threat. Hurricanes, despite claims to the contrary, are not increasing. In reality, the number of hurricanes in 2022 was unusually low, the second weakest batch of hurricanes since satellite data became available in 1980.
Landfall hurricanes, the most accurate way of charting hurricane frequency, appear to have declined slightly since 1900. Hurricanes each year cost 0.04 percent of global GDP. Projections from the scientific journal Nature, taking into account changes in climate as well as improved ability to protect ourselves from hurricane harm, indicate that by 2100 the damage will be 0.02% even without new climate policies.
The WHO claims that 95,000 worldwide deaths annually from malnutrition will be attributable to unchecked climate change between 2030–2050. That sounds like a lot, but the global total of deaths from malnutrition is 30 million or so annually, a number that is sure to come down as crop yields increase and economic development improves.
Even polar bears, the subject of one of Al Gore’s apocalyptic predictions, are doing okay. Polar bear specialists estimate that, due to hunting limits, the worldwide population is 21,000 to 31,000, up from 12,000 in the 1960s.
Nobel prize winner William Nordhaus estimates that if we stand pat, climate change will cost 4% of GDP by 2100. But the UN predicts that global GDP will rise by 450% in that time, dwarfing the climate induced harm.
Big-government tyrants love crises because of the power and prestige they bring. Instead of impoverishing ourselves with impractical boondoggles, we need to bear down on economic growth and innovation to pull us through. That’s what Americans do best.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
by Pat Nolan | Apr 27, 2023 | Opinion
By Pat Nolan |
Arizona legislators will soon have to choose between two very different plans to spend funding from the highway sales tax originally passed in 1985. One plan, SB1246 by Senator Farnsworth, would keep faith with the promises made to voters that the sales tax would fund highways to relieve traffic congestion around Phoenix.
The alternative proposal, SB1102 by Senator Carroll, would siphon off money from road projects and instead fund “green energy” giveaways proposed by the bureaucrats at the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG). SB1102 proposes to divert $2 billion from highway construction to fund bike lanes, walking trails, bus lanes, and other unspecified “special projects.” In other words, it establishes a slush fund comparable to the “Green New Deal” of the Biden Administration.
The Farnsworth bill, on the other hand, will fully fund the freeway expansions promised to the voters, and there will be no green slush fund. Also, none of the transportation money could be used to remove traffic lanes to make room for bike paths.
It also requires government-subsidized transit to operate efficiently and recover 25% of the cost from the riders, as they promised. In reality, the government-run system falls woefully short of that requirement, collecting a mere 7% currently. Senator Farnsworth’s bill will make public transit meet their revenue projections. If they fail to do so, private companies could bid to provide transit services and guarantee the revenue as promised to the voters.
The Left’s fixation with public transit has resulted in hundreds of millions pouring into the black hole of failing transit systems. Yet, despite the clear evidence that transit systems run by the government are a white elephant, they keep pumping more tax dollars into them. They cannot point to any city where the ridership has met their projections. The reason is simple. When pollsters ask the public, they say they want more public transit. However, when asked if they intend to use it, they say they have no intention of using it. They want other drivers to use transit to get those cars off the freeways.
SB1102 would help MAG pursue their far-Left agenda, which now includes imposing California-like restrictions on Arizonans, including banning the internal combustion engine and gas appliances. We must end such power grabs by the bureaucracy, and the Arizona Legislature can start by killing this bill and passing Senator Farnsworth’s SB1246.
The late, great conservative Senator Everett Dirksen famously explained the thinking of legislators when he said, “When I feel the heat, I see the light.” Taxpayers can hold legislators’ feet to the fire by telling them to vote NO on SB1102 and AYE for SB1246.
Pat Nolan is the Director Emeritus of the Nolan Center for Justice at the American Conservative Union and lives in Prescott.
by Michael Infanzon | Apr 26, 2023 | Opinion
By Michael Infanzon |
Firearms are a serious matter, and it’s essential to teach children from an early age about their potential danger. Unfortunately, not all parents and guardians are adequately informed or trained to teach their kids about gun safety. That’s why it’s important to have programs in place to help educate children about the importance of not playing with firearms.
This session, Representative Selina Bliss tried to do just that when she introduced HB2332, a bill dealing with firearms safety training in Arizona schools. But Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed it. This decision is concerning because it may put the safety of children at risk.
HB2332 would have provided education and resources to schools to teach children about firearm safety and the consequences of playing with guns. The Governor’s decision to veto the bill sends the message that gun safety is not a priority for the state, which is simply unacceptable. In her veto letter, Governor Hobbs stated, “Ensuring the safety of our students is a responsibility that belongs to all of us.” We agree. That is why HB2332 was so important, and yet while the Governor admits to meeting “with gun safety advocates to discuss acts of preventable gun violence,” she never responded to numerous requests to meet and discuss from us.
It’s crucial to remember that firearms are not toys, and they should never be treated as such. Children must understand the dangers associated with guns and how to handle them safely, even if they have never personally encountered a firearm before. This education can be the difference between life and death for both the child and those around them.
That’s why it’s critical for parents and guardians to take responsibility for educating their children about firearms, especially now that HB2332 has been vetoed. They should talk to their kids about the dangers of playing with guns and emphasize the importance of never touching a firearm without adult supervision. It’s also crucial to teach children what to do if they come across a firearm accidentally, such as immediately leaving the area and telling a trusted adult.
Moreover, parents and guardians should teach their children to differentiate between toys and firearms, as some toy guns look similar to real firearms. It’s important to emphasize that real guns can cause harm and are not to be played with, no matter how similar they may look to a toy.
Teaching children about firearm safety is a paramount responsibility for parents, guardians, and society as a whole. It’s not only about protecting our children but also about preventing tragedies. While the veto of the recent bill is disheartening, we can all take steps to educate our children about the importance of not playing with firearms. By doing so, we can create a safer world for our children to live in.
Michael Infanzon is the Managing Partner for EPIC Policy Group and lobbies on behalf of groups like the Arizona Citizens Defense League and the Arizona Firearms Industry Trade Association.
