Urgent- You must help us kill SB281
- Thread starter Delegate Dwyer
- Start date
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HoCoShooter
Ultimate Member
Can we merge this?
southsidej
Member
- Jan 12, 2010
- 17
I will be there. All night if necessary.
NY Transplant
Wabbit Season/Duck Season
I'm making arrangements to go down with some work colleagues and one question that was asked was how late does the shuttle run since it is anticipated that this may run into the late evening.
Mooseman
R.I.P.- Hooligan #4
Delegate, thank you for all you do for us. You are a true Second Amendment warrior.
Broder
Active Member
- Jan 13, 2013
- 154
I will be there.
-Z/28-
I wanna go fast
They can't do that without permission, which is doubtful. When in uniform an officer is a representative of his dept. He doesn't have 1A rights.
Dan-o
fly in the wall
I called Frosh's office yesterday and suggested that if her were serious about public safety that he push legislation requiting the wear of boxing gloves by all adults when in public as beating deaths are 4x more common than murder by any type of rifle....
ItsGarand
-> TEUFELSBERG <-
Bump + I'll be there
Kashmir1008
MSI Executive Member
Yes it has been moved but we expect that some people may still want to show up on the 8th as that corresponds to the national event. Also some people may not have gotten the word that we moved it to the 6th so they may still show up.
Again, we made the decision to move the date of the rally so it will bring us all to Annapolis on the day the gun ban bill is being heard.
amonch
Member
I am there on the 6th! Already sent my emails.
BeltBuckle
Ultimate Member
All -- Esp Mods and MSI Exec Members -- I plan to participate on the 6th and hope to be able to testify. Below is a draft of my testimony for your comments. (I have notes to the sources I cite -- didn't come through when I cut/pasted).
Anybody who has suggestions how I might improve this for effect, please fire away. Anybody who wants to borrow from this, also please feel free.
Thanks in advance!
Testimony In opposition to
SB 281 and similar legislation
Md. State Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee
Annapolis, MD
6 February 2013
Senators and Fellow Citizens:
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on SB 281. My remarks apply also to related legislation with similar provisions.
In a recent interview, President Obama advised those favoring additional restrictions on law-abiding owners of firearms that “…advocates of gun control have to do a little more listening than they do sometimes.” I hope that you will hear what I have come here to say.
I am a scientist by training. My professional career is based on a profound respect for the facts as we find them, not as we wish they would be. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is follow these facts where they lead. But in the aftermath of such tragedies as Sandy Hook, when emotions understandably are at extraordinary heights, the need to respect facts remains undiminshed.
The Governor has offered SB 281 as a means to reduce gun violence, particularly of the sort we saw and mourn at Sandy Hook. But there is nothing in SB 281, had it been in force in Connecticut on 14 December 2012 that would have prevented the tragedy that day. The troubled perpetrator murdered the owner of several weapons, stole them, and pursued his evil intentions.
An analysis commissioned by the National Institute of Justice of the U.S. Department of Justice examined FBI data on the frequency and distribution of gun crimes before, during, and after the “assault weapons ban” and magazine capacity limits that were in effect from 1994 to 2004. It concluded “There has not been a clear decline in the use of ARs, though assessments are complicated by the rarity of crimes with these weapons…” The Centers for Disease Control reached similar conclusions and the National Research Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences found that “due to the… relative rarity with which the banned guns were used in crime before the ban … the maximum potential effect of the ban on gun violence outcomes would be very small…” if discernible at all.
The most recent FBI data show that here in Maryland, in 2011, a total of 398 murders were committed. The smallest category of murder weapons tabulated was rifles (of all kinds, of which “assault rifles” are a subset), with a total of 2. Seventy five murders were committed with “knives or cutting instruments,” 34 with “other weapons” (unspecified) and 17 with “hands, fists, feet, etc.” No one who pays any attention to these issues is surprised to learn that the largest number of murders was committed with handguns.
On its face, therefore, SB 281 by design, cannot have the kind of substantial impact in reducing gun violence its proponents hope for, because it focuses on a class of weapons that is, at best, involved in only a minuscule fraction of such crimes. It is furthermore based on the naïve and abundantly disproven assumption that the crazies and criminals who commit such crimes would be deterred by a new law, piled atop the many pre-existing laws that already make illegal the evil things they would do.
SB 281 would, however, do more than merely ban in Maryland the most popular modern sporting rifles on sale today, which are rarely used in crimes. SB 281 would ban ammunition magazines that are standard in use with most modern handguns and rifles if they have a capacity greater than 10 rounds. These are inaccurately and pejoratively called “high capacity” magazines. This provision in the bill is based, apparently, on the unrealistic expectation that an evildoer cannot accomplish with, for example, 3 ten round magazines, what he could with one or two of 15 or greater rounds capacity. Data and experience show such expectations are naïve and unrealistic. In fact, the most heinous mass shooting in our nations’ history, at Virginia tech, involved an individual armed not with high capacity magazines, but with a backpack full of 10 round magazines, and a small number of 15s. The death toll was not limited by the capacity of the magazines he carried, but by the fact that he operated in a “gun free zone” with plenty of time to exercise his intentions.
The notion that a ban on “assault weapons” would have the beneficial results its proponents claim for it is not only falsified by experience, but is undermined by critical analysis. The term “assault weapon” refers, in fact, to select fire weapons with the capacity for fully automatic fire – that is, shooting multiple bullets with a single trigger pull. Such weapons are, for all intents and purposes, not available to the common citizen today. It is factually incorrect to call a semi-automatic rifle an assault weapon – it is not, and no military on the planet issues them to its infantry for standard use. It is equally inaccurate to refer to the modern sporting rifle as “high powered” – it is not. It is an intermediate power weapon, barred in some states from use in hunting big game because to be effective in such situations requires a degree of accuracy that not all hunters or marksmen can routinely achieve.
We see, therefore, that for a host of reasons, SB 281 simply cannot do what its proponents claim they want to accomplish. But history and legal precedents make certain that passage of SB 281 would lead to some specific results. It would severely encumber – that is to say, infringe upon the rights of law abiding citizens to keep and bear firearms of the most widely owned types; and it would undoubtedly ensnare the State in a series of legal challenges it would be certain to lose, after great expense to the taxpayers of the state. There is, therefore, nothing about SB 281 that would advance the public interest or improve public safety for the citizens of Maryland.
There is an additional pernicious and vile effect it can be counted upon to have, however, if prudence and wisdom are abandoned and this legislation adopted. History shows a consistent pattern wherein governments that pass draconian arms control measures, in service of whatever overweening and misguided motives, are greeted by widespread non-compliance. The Governor and his allies in advancing this proposal would do well to review their history, for the “shot heard ‘round the world’ was fired in 1776 when the British tyrant sought to confiscate the arms of our forefathers.
There are, no doubt, things that could be done that would help us further encourage the trends that have seen violent crime drop by 50% over the past several decades: reversing the chronic neglect to our mental health system, for example. None of these require infringing on the rights the Framers wisely protected with the Bill of Rights.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.
Anybody who has suggestions how I might improve this for effect, please fire away. Anybody who wants to borrow from this, also please feel free.
Thanks in advance!
Testimony In opposition to
SB 281 and similar legislation
Md. State Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee
Annapolis, MD
6 February 2013
Senators and Fellow Citizens:
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on SB 281. My remarks apply also to related legislation with similar provisions.
In a recent interview, President Obama advised those favoring additional restrictions on law-abiding owners of firearms that “…advocates of gun control have to do a little more listening than they do sometimes.” I hope that you will hear what I have come here to say.
I am a scientist by training. My professional career is based on a profound respect for the facts as we find them, not as we wish they would be. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is follow these facts where they lead. But in the aftermath of such tragedies as Sandy Hook, when emotions understandably are at extraordinary heights, the need to respect facts remains undiminshed.
The Governor has offered SB 281 as a means to reduce gun violence, particularly of the sort we saw and mourn at Sandy Hook. But there is nothing in SB 281, had it been in force in Connecticut on 14 December 2012 that would have prevented the tragedy that day. The troubled perpetrator murdered the owner of several weapons, stole them, and pursued his evil intentions.
An analysis commissioned by the National Institute of Justice of the U.S. Department of Justice examined FBI data on the frequency and distribution of gun crimes before, during, and after the “assault weapons ban” and magazine capacity limits that were in effect from 1994 to 2004. It concluded “There has not been a clear decline in the use of ARs, though assessments are complicated by the rarity of crimes with these weapons…” The Centers for Disease Control reached similar conclusions and the National Research Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences found that “due to the… relative rarity with which the banned guns were used in crime before the ban … the maximum potential effect of the ban on gun violence outcomes would be very small…” if discernible at all.
The most recent FBI data show that here in Maryland, in 2011, a total of 398 murders were committed. The smallest category of murder weapons tabulated was rifles (of all kinds, of which “assault rifles” are a subset), with a total of 2. Seventy five murders were committed with “knives or cutting instruments,” 34 with “other weapons” (unspecified) and 17 with “hands, fists, feet, etc.” No one who pays any attention to these issues is surprised to learn that the largest number of murders was committed with handguns.
On its face, therefore, SB 281 by design, cannot have the kind of substantial impact in reducing gun violence its proponents hope for, because it focuses on a class of weapons that is, at best, involved in only a minuscule fraction of such crimes. It is furthermore based on the naïve and abundantly disproven assumption that the crazies and criminals who commit such crimes would be deterred by a new law, piled atop the many pre-existing laws that already make illegal the evil things they would do.
SB 281 would, however, do more than merely ban in Maryland the most popular modern sporting rifles on sale today, which are rarely used in crimes. SB 281 would ban ammunition magazines that are standard in use with most modern handguns and rifles if they have a capacity greater than 10 rounds. These are inaccurately and pejoratively called “high capacity” magazines. This provision in the bill is based, apparently, on the unrealistic expectation that an evildoer cannot accomplish with, for example, 3 ten round magazines, what he could with one or two of 15 or greater rounds capacity. Data and experience show such expectations are naïve and unrealistic. In fact, the most heinous mass shooting in our nations’ history, at Virginia tech, involved an individual armed not with high capacity magazines, but with a backpack full of 10 round magazines, and a small number of 15s. The death toll was not limited by the capacity of the magazines he carried, but by the fact that he operated in a “gun free zone” with plenty of time to exercise his intentions.
The notion that a ban on “assault weapons” would have the beneficial results its proponents claim for it is not only falsified by experience, but is undermined by critical analysis. The term “assault weapon” refers, in fact, to select fire weapons with the capacity for fully automatic fire – that is, shooting multiple bullets with a single trigger pull. Such weapons are, for all intents and purposes, not available to the common citizen today. It is factually incorrect to call a semi-automatic rifle an assault weapon – it is not, and no military on the planet issues them to its infantry for standard use. It is equally inaccurate to refer to the modern sporting rifle as “high powered” – it is not. It is an intermediate power weapon, barred in some states from use in hunting big game because to be effective in such situations requires a degree of accuracy that not all hunters or marksmen can routinely achieve.
We see, therefore, that for a host of reasons, SB 281 simply cannot do what its proponents claim they want to accomplish. But history and legal precedents make certain that passage of SB 281 would lead to some specific results. It would severely encumber – that is to say, infringe upon the rights of law abiding citizens to keep and bear firearms of the most widely owned types; and it would undoubtedly ensnare the State in a series of legal challenges it would be certain to lose, after great expense to the taxpayers of the state. There is, therefore, nothing about SB 281 that would advance the public interest or improve public safety for the citizens of Maryland.
There is an additional pernicious and vile effect it can be counted upon to have, however, if prudence and wisdom are abandoned and this legislation adopted. History shows a consistent pattern wherein governments that pass draconian arms control measures, in service of whatever overweening and misguided motives, are greeted by widespread non-compliance. The Governor and his allies in advancing this proposal would do well to review their history, for the “shot heard ‘round the world’ was fired in 1776 when the British tyrant sought to confiscate the arms of our forefathers.
There are, no doubt, things that could be done that would help us further encourage the trends that have seen violent crime drop by 50% over the past several decades: reversing the chronic neglect to our mental health system, for example. None of these require infringing on the rights the Framers wisely protected with the Bill of Rights.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.
ricuser
Member
Your testimony is excellent - facts and refutation of the assumptions implicit in the bill. However, testimony is limited to three minutes. I have testified before these committees; you should expect the members to be juggling multiple inputs. Some will be absent for long periods but others will pay close attention.
In the circumstances I suggest you provide the whole as written testimony for the committee with all the backup you want. Focus on two or three key points in the oral testimony and time a practice presentation while speaking slowly. Slower than normal speech is more compelling.
Good luck!
In the circumstances I suggest you provide the whole as written testimony for the committee with all the backup you want. Focus on two or three key points in the oral testimony and time a practice presentation while speaking slowly. Slower than normal speech is more compelling.
Good luck!
daNattyFatty
Ultimate Member
What was their response?
Reading with a normal voice pattern, at a reasonable rate (not rushing).... I hit 3 minutes at or around "Such weapons are, for all intents and purposes, not available to the common citizen today."
It's well written and will make great written testimony, but you need to put it on a diet to meet the 3 minute requirement that may very well be cut down to 2.
Dan-o
fly in the wall
I was laughed at and told that it wont happen.
Tree Rat
Always a good target
- May 20, 2005
- 860
Hey guys...can we do this?
Let's stop responding to this and other threads with your life excuses as to why you cannot make a rally and hearing to thwart an historic threat to our liberties. It is understood that everyone has demands and commitments with family, career & work, etc., so if in your judgement that precludes you from being able to support the cause, then leave it at that. Some of the all too frequent excuses I've read here are simply trivial and just add to the disgusting mood of it all.
You feel bad with your decision not to commit? Maybe you should re-evaluate your decision, baring life or death, safety, or national security obligations. Otherwise, if you expect to be exhonerated here? Don't.
The situation is dire as it stands right now. A day from our good lives and it's obligations in my view cannot be too much to ask in most cases to fight for our liberty that is now under seige.
Apologize in advance to those that might find this position offensive. For everyone else, I'll see you guys in Annapolis on the 6th.
New round of emails and calls went out today.
TR
EDIT: Issue not so evident in this particular thread as in others, but I prolly should'nt repeat my rant elsewhere.
Let's stop responding to this and other threads with your life excuses as to why you cannot make a rally and hearing to thwart an historic threat to our liberties. It is understood that everyone has demands and commitments with family, career & work, etc., so if in your judgement that precludes you from being able to support the cause, then leave it at that. Some of the all too frequent excuses I've read here are simply trivial and just add to the disgusting mood of it all.
You feel bad with your decision not to commit? Maybe you should re-evaluate your decision, baring life or death, safety, or national security obligations. Otherwise, if you expect to be exhonerated here? Don't.
The situation is dire as it stands right now. A day from our good lives and it's obligations in my view cannot be too much to ask in most cases to fight for our liberty that is now under seige.
Apologize in advance to those that might find this position offensive. For everyone else, I'll see you guys in Annapolis on the 6th.
New round of emails and calls went out today.
TR
EDIT: Issue not so evident in this particular thread as in others, but I prolly should'nt repeat my rant elsewhere.
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