Will Nebraska Be Next?.

Maybe! The Omaha World-Herald is reporting that State Sen. Jeanne Combs is making a pretty damned good run at it:

Guns a part of life for state senator

BY LESLIE REED
WORLD-HERALD BUREAU

LINCOLN - She has a .38, and she knows how to shoot it.

State Sen. Jeanne Combs believes she can accomplish what three male lawmakers in 10 years before her could not: to persuade the Nebraska Legislature to authorize carrying concealed handguns.

A nurse at the Farmland Foods meatpacking plant in Crete, Combs is a down-home woman with roots in Kentucky and the mill towns of Ohio.

Now 49, she grew up around hunting and often ate squirrel for supper at her Grandma Della Hacker's home in Kentucky's Clay County.

She came to believe that people couldn't count on police for protection after her home was burglarized - twice - while living in Southern California.

Amazing, isn't it, that exposure to the reality that the government can't be responsible for one's safety tends to make one appreciate the right to arms?

She purchased her stainless steel Smith & Wesson revolver when she was a home health-care and hospice nurse in Jackson County, Ky., 11 years ago.

She felt she needed it for protection as she traveled alone, often at night, visiting patients along backroads and in the hollers around Daniel Boone National Forest.

"I never had to use it, I just had it with me," she said. "It was in my black bag, with my stethoscope and my blood pressure cuff. It was right in the bottom, in a little snap pocket."

She drove up to 100 miles to visit dying patients and people suffering from injuries or chronic disease. Most qualified for government health assistance and few had indoor plumbing.

"In that culture, everyone has a gun," she said. "They carry them clipped to their belt, like people around here do a Vise-Grip."

I think she meant a Leatherman, but you get the idea.

Was she carrying the gun legally? "I don't know," she said.

Actually, she wasn't.

Since moving to Nebraska nine years ago, Combs has stored her gun in a locked box in a closet. She's no longer in a job where she feels she needs a firearm. Until recently, she hadn't gotten the pistol out for more than a year.

But if she needed it, Combs said, she'd like to be able to legally stow it in her purse or glove compartment. In Nebraska, she said, it's not socially acceptable - though it's legal - to carry a gun in the open.

"I'd be the talk of the town to walk around with a gun on my hip," she said.

Lawmakers are expected to soon begin debating Combs' proposal, Legislative Bill 454, perhaps as early as this week.

This weekend, she planned to attend three days of handgun training at Front Sight Resort in Nevada, described on its Web site as the "World's Premier Resort for Self Defense and Personal Safety Training."

The training, which normally costs $900, is being provided by the Michigan Legislative Sportsmen's Foundation. Combs is a member of the Nebraska Sportsmen's Foundation.

The Front Sight course is accepted for concealed-handgun permits in 23 states. Combs wants to be able to describe, first-hand, the training typically required for obtaining a concealed-weapon permit.

Coverage of THAT would be fascinating! So you can bet no one will.

Combs learned to shoot using her father's and brother's guns while growing up in New Miami, Ohio. Her father, a ninth-generation resident of Clay County, Ky., moved to Ohio after World War II to find work. He died when Combs was 14.

Her mother was the daughter of Sicilian immigrants who grew and sold vegetables and plants in Hamilton, Ohio.

After earning a nursing degree from Miami University of Ohio, Combs moved to California with her first husband and young daughter in 1980. She worked as director of nursing for a retirement community.

While living in Riverside, Calif., her housing development became caught up in a turf war between two gangs, she said. On her days off she rode her bike around the neighborhood to cover gang graffiti with spray paint.

Doesn't that job come with combat pay?

The second time her home was burglarized, she said, police were slow to arrive. A suspect was arrested only because a neighbor got his license plate number. He was sentenced to three years in prison, but court officials warned her he could be released well before that.

You don't say. And the subtext: "You'll be on your own, in that case."

Later she moved to Kentucky, and in 1995 to Friend, Neb., with her second husband, Ronald Combs, whom she recently divorced.

She now lives in Milligan in a home near her mother and stepfather, Shirley and Bill Lewis. They fell in love with Nebraska after attending her 2000 graduation from Concordia University in Seward with a degree in health care administration.

Combs compares her handgun to seat belts or a fire extinguisher.

"You want to be prepared," she said. "It doesn't mean you're living in fear. You want to take a practical approach to living in safety."

Senator Combs is, of course, a Republican.

Good luck, Ms. Combs. Good luck, Nebraska.

If you want to help, copy and paste the link to the Omaha World-Herald's front page, http://www.omaha.com, for their current poll question, "Do you agree with a Nebraska state senator's efforts to authorize the carrying of concealed weapons in the state?" At the time of this writing the poll is running 3124 "Yes," 1594 "No," 99 "Undecided," and 26 "I have no opinion (but I'm willing to click on the survey anyway.)"

UPDATE 4/13: From the Heartland reports that things look good.