Like many other legislative hearings on gun control this year, members of the NRA and other Second Amendment organization held a rally before the hearing, and attempted to pack the hearing room.
Unlike some of the hearings in February and March which attracted more than 1,000 people, today’s turnout only numbered a few hundred.
And that’s what the anti-gunners like to see. When only a few hundred of us show up to the hearings, that shows they are wearing us down. These regulations will make it next to impossible to exercise Second Amendment rights in places like Baltimore where there are no shooting ranges. But then again, that was the idea, wasn’t it?
As President of Maryland Shall Issue, I assure nobody is wearing down. Our membership has grown to the point we’d need a stadium to hold everyone.
The hearings were declared an ’emergency’ and largely pro-forma in nature. Testimony was pre-announced and limited to 90 minutes, so no way people beyond 30-40 could get in a word. We didn’t ask people to take off work, and we didn’t look for saturation beyond “more than the state could handle in a day”.
As for the hearing: it’s true that the fix was in and the regs truly suck.
However, I would suggest you review the video of the hearing (specifically what was said by MSP) and think about what might be coming, before declaring the day a disaster. A lot of people on our side were lifting drinks last night. The state had a fix and ended up screwing up big time. The Governor sent people over to shriek at the end of it all. There is cause for those emotions.
We take our victories slow in Maryland and other places in “Occupied USA”. Ask around CA and MA: we gotta work three steps ahead of today’s events.
Oddly, yesterday may prove to have been a real good day for our future.
Thanks for your hard work. I was born in Maryland but left when I was three. Don’t really consider it home, but I’d love to see it liberated by the courts eventually.
Hang in there!!! Your brothers and sisters in occupied America are indeed rooting for you as well. Here in NJ we have had to fight battle after battle but it looks like we are gaining some momentum as well. We WILL take our country back!
Is that video posted somewhere? A cursory search of the MSI homepage didn’t find it.
“The seats in the hearing room were nearly full at mid-afternoon, and a few people sat outside on Lawyer’s Mall listening to the hearing being played over a loud speaker.”
That doesn’t sound all that dispirited to me; esp with Patrick’s statement above
We are not expecting cheerleaders, at all. So “thanks!”.
These hearings typically have 1-2 people show up. We maxed the room and had overflow outside. New to Maryland off-session events.
We had nearly a thousand online watching live from work or home with the kids. Some people pulled kids from school to attend. An Orthodox Rabbi rescheduled religious events to attend. A law journal is considering an article around the statements in the event.
Not a bad day (in Maryland).
And the state FUBAR’d real good. They got lazy and cocky and messed up.
I particularly noted the credit/debit card requirement was put in, not because “the people” had someone abused other forms of payment, but rather “in response to past legislative audits which found that the Maryland State Police didn’t properly monitor cash or personal check transactions”.
Got that? Our
public servantselite masters can’t even handle the sort of ordinary monetary record-keeping that every single retail business manages???? What in h*ll makes anyone think they can manage the permit process itself fairly, then?