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What’s Up in Wyoming?

Written by Orchid

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February 08, 2013

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As part of our continuing series on political hot spots, leading up to our virtual roundtable scheduled for Thursday, February 28, today we ask the question:  What’s up in Wyoming? Wyoming abruptly made national headlines last week when a series of bills zoomed through the state House of Representatives on hefty vote margins – all relative to firearms.  WY House Bill 103 seeks to prevent any political entity, other than the WY state government, from affecting firearms ownership and sales.  WY House Bill 104 seeks to restrict any state official from enforcing any legal directive issued by a political entity other than the state relative to firearms, firearm accessories, and ammunition.  And WY House Bill 105 seeks to permit carrying of concealed weapons on school grounds and athletic events conducted on public property. The top question that comes up among manufacturers is how to read the Wyoming bills and similar ones pending in other states, such as Arizona.  One way to frame the question is whether a state like Wyoming would be a good location to conduct manufacturing activities because it may offer a safe haven to avoid all kinds of federal and state compliance. The bills that passed the Wyoming House are a textbook example of what gets tricky about making business decisions in the current political climate.  Let’s use a hypothetical that the Wyoming bills pass its Senate and are signed into law as currently drafted.  One of two things has a strong probability of occurring:  the state of Wyoming gets sued by the federal United States of America or the state of Wyoming sues the federal United States of America.  In other words, in this hypothetical scenario, Wyoming becomes a lightning rod for a “test case” on issues of federal constitutional law, including, but not limited to federal versus state authority, separation of powers principles, the interstate commerce clause, and the Second Amendment. Pushing this political and legal hypothetical one step further, assuming that the case originates in federal District Court, it is conceivable that the federal and state governments lock into a multi-year legal contest, which, if it goes all the way to the United States Supreme Court, could last upwards of five or more years. Does that give you a glimpse of the dynamic? When one of a core set of political issues sails into the high seas of hot politics, the climate it creates for business is inherently unstable.  The US President issues Executive Actions.  More than 25 bills get introduced in Congress.  At least five states, including Wyoming, decide to start voting on bills that become invitations to litigation.  Other states, like New York, start rapidly passing laws with increased business compliance. What it means for our industry is that firearms and ammunition manufacturers will need to design individualized metrics to conduct a political analysis, side-by-side to standard business calculations.  But where the financial models have a clear benefit at equation results allowing for rational decision-making, the political metrics will involve an element of guess work.  For an industry driven by extreme measures and feats of engineering, the notion of someone making a “best guess” is going to be uncomfortable, to say the least.

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