THE LIBERTY BLOCK

Poison Pill - An addition or amendment to a bill that renders it inept.

 

Politicians understand the importance of publicly supporting bills that their constituents support and publicly opposing bills that their constituents oppose. They often want certain policies to become law despite their constituents opposing the policy. As such, these dirty politicians regularly propose amendments to bills that are supported (or bills that have deceptive titles) by their constituents. In these cases, the amendments are the primary component of the bill. 

 

The most well-known and recent case of a poison pill was the 'concealed carry reciprocity act' which Trump campaigned on and which millions of American gun-owners supported. Very few members of Congress supported the restoration of the 2nd amendment right to bear arms, so Republicans & Democrats in Congress proposed amendments that poisoned the bill so badly that Gun Owners of America (Video) actually urged its members to oppose the bill. The NRA supported the poisoned bill.

 

We warned New Hampshire residents how dangerously poisoned SB492 was. The title seemed fairly benign: "An act prohibiting bump stocks in New Hampshire". 

 

But the bill also seemed to prohibit anything that could potentially increase the rate that any individual could fire any semi-auto firearm. This would potentially criminalize nearly all upgrades made to nearly all firearms.

 

SB193 was a great school choice/voucher bill that conservatives supported....and then Republicans and Democrats in Concord poisoned it.

 

There are likely poison pills being secretly placed into legislation in every state hundreds of times each year. For this reason, it is crucial that you begin familiarizing yourself with legislation and using every possible resource to interpret new bills in your state legislature. Disregard bill titles and don't trust politicians!