The General Assembly is in session, so of course nothing is safe. This keeps our immediate attention focused on the Annapolis shenanigans until midnight on April 12 th when the legislature adjourns sine die . They'll have had their fun. Then we get to have ours. It's an election year, after all.
The rumbling you felt was not from an earthquake in Haiti but from Ted Kennedy rolling over in his grave at Scott Brown's election in MA. We see the result as a tremendous validation that issues count . Of course, everyone reads into it what he wants, and many in the GOP are excitedly sipping Kool-Aid while constructing an argument for why MA's outcome means something here. It isn't clear that it does, at least for statewide office. The issues might be in place, but candidates with name recognition who haven't already trashed those issues aren't. For governor, the only conservative on the horizon with a consistent track record is a Democrat – George Owings – and even without fundraising he starts with more cash than the GOP state party, which goes into election year saddled with debt.
Mike Steele has a book out called Right Now . He advocates that GOP candidates with a problematic past own up to their liberal misdeeds in order to prepare for new races. Abstractly this is the right thing, even if a bit late. You must recognize a problem before you can fix it. So far there is no sign that Bob Ehrlich will take Mike's cleansing advice by speaking openly of his administration's misdeeds on guns, taxes and big government. If he runs, it won't be with any ‘base.'
On to the gun bills: As we go to production only a dozen gun bills are in, most classified as such for purely technical reasons – but some not. SB191 proposes to create ‘weapons free higher education zones', much like we already have drug free schools zones. (You see how well that's worked, right?) With 22 senate sponsors, it could move. It's not that it will affect many folks as written, nor have any public safety value. (Do you know many people with a carry permit who work on a campus?) But we can't afford the hit to our issue advocacy in the public eye. This bill is in purely to posture, so we can't let them have it, and we really can't risk it being amended later to expand scope (a ‘weapon free state' for example.)
A limited carry bill (reciprocity for some neighboring states) will already have been heard by the time you get this. No surprise – it isn't going anywhere, and the diminishing effort on carry only telegraphs community weakness. It trains legislators to reflexively vote “no” and puts off the day when a credible effort on carry reform might succeed.
HB119 proposes to let dealers transmit regulated firearm purchase requests to MSP by means other than mail or fax. (Think web forms and email.) While it might shorten some processing time for consumers, the real effect will be to off-load data entry from police and improve the quality of their computerized records. Gunowners have no business freeing the MSP Licensing Section to find other things to do with their time, nor letting them make a case some day that any data stored in their computers is sufficiently accurate to be used by itself in court proceedings. We oppose.
SB44 and HB309 expand to all firearms a mandatory minimum jail sentence for use in a crime. There is no scientific basis to believe these would improve public safety, and every reason to believe proponents just want to ‘send a message'. (The only message those on the right send by supporting these bills is “we no longer have intellectual integrity and can never be effective defending gun rights.”) These bills trash our issue advocacy out in the trenches where we are working to counter the ‘guns are bad' media message. We teach “it's not the gun, it's the criminal” but that's a hard message to sell when in Annapolis our alleged friends stab us in the back with bills that say “okay, sometimes it really is the gun!” It confirms a ‘guns are bad' spin and teaches the middle ground – a turf which we contest every day – that the right and left agree guns need special restrictions, so it is only a matter of then agreeing on enough control. These proposals died in the past. They must die again – as must the craven political gamesmanship that trigger their introduction in the first place.
Ostensibly not a gun bill, SB152 would give the Harford county sheriff power to enforce MDE noise regulations. A measure intended as an end-around local government's unwillingness to deal with ATVs that are unpopular in some circles, it gives the sheriff a hammer to use on gunowners, farmers and, yes, maybe some All Terrain Vehicles too. Want to use a hand trap and bust some birds on your rural property some afternoon? Good luck getting that 12ga shotgun down to 65 decibels at the property line if your neighbors are fresh from the suburbs in search of their image of quiet country living. We don't want to think about giving even more power to the likes of Montgomery County's Sheriff Kight, should a bill like this get legs. (Giving one county extra powers is always followed by requests from the other counties.)
Budget matters dominate the town right now. Picture a bag full of weasels fighting over a stale donut and you more or less get the right image. State employees and taxpayers are already guaranteed losers. Our mission is to ensure that gunowners do not end up as special losers. More legislation is still to come. Senators have through Feb 5th to submit bills for regular consideration; the House has to Feb 12th.