Standing up for Kansans' liberty

Defending the Second Amendment

Derek stands up for the right of Kansans to keep and bear arms. In the Senate, he sponsored the proposed amendment to the Kansas Constitution, which goes to a public vote in November 2010, to make clear that the right to bear arms is an individual liberty.
In 2009, Derek signed an amicus curiae brief asking the United States Supreme Court in McDonald v. City of Chicago to declare the individual right to keep and bear arms safe from state and local government intrusion.
Derek has a lifetime A+ rating from the National Rifle Association.

After the United States Supreme Court decided Kelo v. New London, Derek wrote the Kansas law preventing government from taking one person's private property and transferring it to another private owner.

In response to the despicable picketing of military funerals by the Topeka-based Phelps family, Derek helped write the 2007 Kansas law that protects the privacy of mourners at funerals. He joined members of the Patriot Guard at the ceremony where the governor signed the bill into law.

Derek wrote the law overturning the September 2009 Kansas Supreme Court case State v. Hendrix. The court interpreted the right to self defense narrowly, and Derek's new law makes clear that homeowners have the right to threaten or use force to repel intruders.

When the federal government, in the new health care law, claimed the unprecedented power to order American citizens to spend their own money to buy an insurance product that happens to be favored by Congress, Derek urged the Kansas attorney general to stand up and fight this power grab alongside almost two dozen other states. The current officeholder declined.