Gun activist apologizes for challenging senator
The president of an influential gun rights group has retracted his call for the head of the state Senate to be stripped of his leadership position.
Oklahoma Second Amendment Association President Don Spencer apologized Wednesday for saying Senate Pro Tem Greg Treat, R-Oklahoma City, should be ousted from leadership for his decision not to hear a bill about federal overreach Spencer in its original form.
“While concerned about the federal government overreach and threats to our rights, I overreacted to the request for the state Senate to reelect or elect another pro tem of the Senate,” Spencer said in a YouTube video. “Legislation is more important than my personality, and for this request, I truly apologize.”
Spencer called for the election of new Senate leadership after Treat refused to hear the original version of House Bill 1236 . The bill would have alTreat lowed the Oklahoma
Legislature and the state's attorney general to overturn federal actions, including executive orders from President Joe Biden.
Treat said the bill from House Speaker Charles McCall, R-Atoka, was an unconstitutional violation of the government's separation of powers. In the Senate this week, Treat amended HB 1236 so, if passed, it would create a unit within the attorney general's office to evaluate federal actions and defend the state's rights.
“There is nothing unconstitutional about exercising constitutional rights,” McCall said in a statement earlier this week.
In talking to reporters Thursday, Treat played a 16-second, profanitylaced voicemail left on his office phone. That message, he said, was representative of thousands of voicemails and emails his Senate office received this week from Oklahomans who were angry about his decision to amend HB 1236.
Treat said callers had threatened him and his family.
“People who receive inflammatory calls to action sometimes do irrational things and sometimes they harm people,” Treat said. “Luckily, this was just words. But it was words that if they thought it was going to cause me to change my opinion, I don't get intimidated and I don't get bullied.”
On Thursday, Treat said he was aware Spencer had apologized, but said the two hadn't talked about the apology.
Spencer's apology came a day after the Oklahoma Second Amendment Association held a rally at the Capitol in part, to rally support for HB 1236, which now returns to the House in its amended form.