Tulsa Mayor Remains Silent on Effort to Repeal Constitutional Carry via Referendum
Jose Nino
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After Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt made an announcement on Twitter that he signed a referendum petition to repeal the Constitutional Carry law passed by the Legislature earlier this year, Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum has remained silent on the issue.
The Tulsa World reports that they did not receive a response from Bynum after they reached out to him on Thursday, August 22, 2019.
Bynum posted a message on his Facebook page later in the afternoon stating that “some things don’t fit in sound bites.”
The Tulsa mayor claims that he ran for mayor promising to bring the city together to confront its biggest challenges.
Bynum wrote, “So if you are in a job like mine, you focus on the things you can really make a difference on — and you bring together people who otherwise disagree on the other stuff to fix those things within your purview.” He added, “You sacrifice your right to express your opinion on every issue in service to the job you’ve been given.”
The Tulsa mayor is well aware that some of his friends get frustrated by how he doesn’t comment on national politics, add his name group letters to the U.S. Senate or “jump into the fray on state initiative petitions.”
“As a citizen, you should feel free to do all of these things,” Bynum declared. “As a citizen, I have opinions on all of them too. But as mayor, I have a responsibility to pull our city together so we can move it forward.”
The previous week, Bynum said that he did not sign a U.S. Conference of Mayors letter to the U.S. Senate calling for immediate legislative action on gun control because he does not sign group letters..
In a tweet on Wednesday, August 21, 2019 , Holt did not express his position on Constitutional Carry but threw his support behind the referendum petition to repeal it.
The Oklahoma Supreme court recently weighed in on the Oklahoma Constitutional Carry repeal petition. It declared that the petition organizers such as Democratic State Representative Jason Lowe must now count the number of petitions that they submitted to the Oklahoma Secretary of State.
For this petition to be put on the ballot, they need slightly under 60,000 petition signatures.
A repeal of Constitutional Carry would set Oklahoma back in terms of its overall gun policies. It is already ranked among the most pro-gun states according to Guns & Ammo magazine, which puts it in 6th place for best states for gun owners.
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