Constitutional Carry passed the House 83-62. This should make the victory even more sweet:
The Maine Chiefs of Police effort to convince lawmakers to reject the proposal has been backed by a volley of paid radio, TV and Web advertising from Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund and the Maine chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. Everytown for Gun Safety is a political group formed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a well-known gun control advocate who has financed efforts to counter the NRA on a wide range of state and federal gun legislation.
So we’ve beaten Bloomberg yet again. The only thing he can trump us on is money, and influencing legislators is more of a grassroots game than a rich man’s game. Note the State Rep that noted getting 1500 letters. That stuff makes a difference.
Now it goes onto Republican Governor Paul LePage, who has in the past expressed support for eliminating the permit requirement.
Huzzah! This is fantastic news!
Now, if only we could convince Utah’s Legislature and Governor to follow suit. (I still feel cheated by my State government that we weren’t in the top 5 for Constitutional Carry…)
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Famous Maine resident Stephen King, head just exploded. Scanners style!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI3NoBeNwfk
Can’t find text of bill, does it allow non residents like Vermont or residents only, like Kansas?
Text of the bill (now law) just says “person”, so non-residents should be free to carry as well.
This is somewhat of a tangent to the subject, but earlier when wondering “How did Maine gun owners do it?”, I looked into the general political situation in Maine, and found that (according to Wikipedia) Maine has only 1,330,089 citizens, with a legislature consisting of 131 Representatives and 35 Senators.
By comparison, Pennsylvania has (again according to Wikipedia) 12,787,209 citizens with a legislature consisting of 203 Representatives and 50 Senators.
Thus, Maine has 10,153 citizens for each Representative, while Pennsylvania has a whopping 62,991 citizens per Representative. Maine has 38,002 citizens per Senator, while Pennsylvania has 255,744. Clearly Maine’s legislators are much closer to their constituents than Pennsylvania’s. They presumably are more reachable by citizen direct action. Bloomberg’s money is less influential than it will be in a state like Pennsylvania.
Forgive me for dwelling on this, but right now we have a movement (with legislation) in Pennsylvania to make our legislator smaller yet. This of course is presented as part of the “less government” movement, but when you consider that there will result in still less representation per citizen, it is in many ways a bigger government movement, in that it will make legislators still more distant from their constituents, while leaving fewer of them that the Bloombergs will need to buy. What that will mean for our gun rights remains to be seen, if a smaller legislature comes to be.
Whetherman,
Excellent point – I totally agree.
I believe that has been attempted in Maine in the past, but the people rejected it.
The smaller the group of legislators, the less “in tune” they are with their constituents, and the easier it is to “buy them off” by deep-pocketed outside special interests.
A 1:10,000 ratio is not too bad and seems to work well for the people.
I seem to recall Madison’s most favored amendment of the proposed Bill of Rights would have essentially set the House of Representatives to this ratio.
It would make for a huge House, but that might not be a bad thing. It might even force telecommuting (and result in the Representatives having to stay *very* close to their citizens)!
It’s not too late to ratify that amendment, by the way. One of the other amendments (the one preventing Representatives from voting on their own pay…pay raises have to wait until the next legislative session) squeaked in during the 1990’s, if I recall correctly, as the 27th-ish Amendment, instead of the 1st or 2nd…