tangent4ronpaul
03-30-2013, 07:14 AM
Some of the info below conflicts with the ustream and first person accounts via chat and a message forum. After the ustream went down (battery died) and the legislature shut down their WiFi and they started playing fast and loose with arm twisting and revoting on results they didn't like prompting most attendants to walk out, they slammed through 3/4ths of the amendments in record time... so there is still quite a bit of confusion as to what passed and what didn't. The only clear thing we know is that the legislature is corrupt and tyrannical.
Assault weapons ban survives in Md. gun-control bill
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/assault-weapons-ban-survives-in-md-gun-control-bill/2013/03/29/26ac09ec-98c9-11e2-b68f-dc5c4b47e519_story.html
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley notched a victory late Friday in a House committee that had become a linchpin in his efforts to pass one of the most far-reaching legislative responses to last year’s deadly school shooting in Newtown, Conn.
After more than eight hours of debate, every major provisions of the governor’s gun-control bill, including an assault weapons ban and licensing and fingerprinting of gun buyers survived. Conservative Democrats had in recent weeks wavered on the governor’s assault weapons ban, but a core Democratic majority fiercely defended the bill against repeated challenges.
The rare joint voting session of the House Judiciary Committee and the chamber’s Health and Government Operations Committee, which share jurisdiction over the bill, was at times met with heckles and boos by hundreds of gun-rights advocates who crowded into the House office building down the street from the State House.
The crowd sighed as O’Malley’s proposed fingerprinting requirement narrowly passed an early vote. Three African American Democrats representing Baltimore City and a conservative one from Western Maryland joined Republicans in opposition to the measure.
“Why do the authorities need to retain the fingerprints,” asked Del. Nathaniel T. Oaks (D-Baltimore), who voted against the requirement, saying it would forever put the fingerprints of law-abiding gun owners alongside those of criminals in state and federal databases.
The most heated moment of the hearing came nearly five hours later when Republicans said the focus should be on criminals, not gun-owners, and appeared to win a vote to add a new law tightening prison sentences for those convicted of gun crimes. Several minutes later, House Judiciary Chairman Joseph F. Vallario (D-Prince George’s) announced that a Democrat had changed his vote and the measure, in fact, would fail. It was a nearly identical scenario to one that played out last month on the state Senate floor.
Shouts of “shame on you,” “communists,” and “we’ll remember in ’14,” rang out from the crowd and dozens stood up and left the hearing in protest. “That’s not democracy; that’s tyranny,” chimed Del. Michael D. Smigiel Sr. (R-Cecil), the author of the provision.
Republicans did win several small changes to the bill, including one spelling out that firearms that now exist in the state but that would be banned for sale as assault weapons could be willed to others.
They also won small changes protecting antique gun collectors and firearms dealers. Those in the voluntary Maryland Defense Force would also be exempt from some provisions of the governor’s new licensing requirement. (can buy/possess AW's w/out all this BS, despite that they don't use guns)
Del. Luiz R. S. Simmons (D-Montgomery) also narrowly won a change to the governor’s bill that will prevent those convicted of violent crimes but later able to get their records expunged from purchasing guns.
He failed, however, to roll back another change his colleagues advanced that would allow Marylanders to continue to purchase guns deemed assault weapons after the bill takes effect on Oct. 1, 2013, so long as purchasers show proof the sale began before October. (The waiting period is currently 45-60 days to get the background check approved, but by federal law the gun dealer is supposed to hand over the gun after 7 days if they haven't got a denied letter by then. MSP has been strong arming gun dealers not to, threatening to revoke their licenses if they do.)
“I thought the purpose of the assault ban was to ban them,” Simmons said. “We’re going to flood the state with assault weapons and then declare victory on Oct. 1 … Maryland will be armed to the teeth by the time the bill takes effect.” :D
Vincent DeMarco, president of Marylanders to Prevent Gun Violence, nonetheless said the House had succeeded in making the governor’s bill stronger. He pointed to Simmons’s amendment, and another that will require gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms within 72 hours.
Shannon Alford, a National Rifle Association lobbyist in Maryland called the evolving bill a “fundamental infringement” of Marylanders Second Amendment rights.
The most significant changes to O’Malley’s bill were contained in a set of 10 changes agreed to in principle by committee members in private meetings on Thursday night.
Those changes stripped out nearly all restrictions on current gun owners in Maryland. But most notably, did not attempt to rewrite O’Malley’s proposed assault weapons ban.
Disagreement over the ban had left the gun-control bill languishing for over a month in the House, with even some key Democrats saying an all-out ban seemed unneeded given how rarely the weapons are used in Maryland killings.
The committee changes also removed any requirement that Marylanders who currently own a gun complete training to obtain a license to buy another one in the future.
Another amendment also would prohibit the state from seeking to force residents who currently own weapons that would be classified as assault weapons from having to register those guns with the state.
Owners of some 60,000 semi-automatic weapons in Maryland would have had to have registered their weapons before next year or have faced criminal penalties, including possible jail time, under the original version of O’Malley’s bill.
The bill is now likely to dominate House floor debate in the final full week of the General Assembly.
Md. House Panels Approve Gun Control Bill
http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2013/03/29/gun-control-legislation-back-before-house-lawmakers/
...
Democratic lawmakers mostly rejected a variety of proposed changes offered by Republicans. In the end, the panels left intact a requirement for future handgun buyers to submit fingerprints to the state police, a ban on assault weapons and limiting magazine rounds to 10 bullets.
...
The bill would make $25 million available for schools to invest in security measures such as locks, cameras and buzzer entrance systems.
Gun control bill advances in House
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-house-gun-control-debate-20130329,0,6258079.story
...
Led by Republicans, gun control opponents tried unsuccessfully to strip fingerprinting provisions and shooting proficiency requirements from the handgun licensing plan. They also failed to exempt handguns from the 10-bullet magazine limit, among other unsuccessful attempts to weaken the bill.
Instead, the panel passed new rules that would create penalties for not reporting a stolen gun and bar gun ownership when people are given probation before judgment in violent crimes.
Proponents called the bill a tougher measure than the version the Senate approved, even though the House version rolled back how some provisions apply to existing gun owners. Current gun owners would not have to register their assault weapons or undergo training if they want to buy a handgun.
...
Under the new version, gun dealers would be allowed to sell their existing inventory of assault-style rifles after the ban took effect Oct. 1. Marylanders who placed orders for the guns before then could legally own them.
Del. Luiz Simmons, a Montgomery County Democrat, predicted that those moves, along with an existing spike in gun sales, would leave Maryland "armed to the teeth" before the ban could take effect. "We're going to flood the state with assault weapons and then declare victory," Simmons said.
The ban on the sale of assault-style rifles, the 10-bullet limit to magazines and a plan to require fingerprints and a license to buy a handgun were unchanged by the two House committees, which waited more than a month to act on the plan.
Del. Michael Smigiel's effort to turn the entire bill into a task force to study assault weapons failed. "We're going to be back in here next year and the year after trying to fix the damage that we're doing," said Smigiel, an Eastern Shore Republican and an outspoken gun-rights advocate.
Over the month since the Senate passed the bill, lawmakers had been debating behind the scenes whether to scale back the ban on assault rifles to exclude some models, including the AR-15. That rifle has been used in the several mass shootings, including the Newtown, Conn., killing of 20 children and six educators that prompted the Maryland legislation.
On Friday, delegates voted to keep that firearm and 44 others on the list of weapons that would be banned for sale. But they narrowed the definition of what qualifies as an assault weapon. A barrel shroud, threaded barrel, pistol grips, thumb-hole stocks and telescoping stocks would not count as features that disqualify a gun for sale.
Other changes make clear that gun manufacturers can still import and store assault weapons, as well as test them and sell them to dealers and out-of-state customers. Those manufacturers would be exempt from the limit on magazine sizes.
Beretta USA and other Maryland gun manufacturers have threatened to leave the state over the bill, and other states have courted the companies to move elsewhere.
Delegates took a slightly different approach on when to bar people with mental illnesses from buying firearms, and created a new process for those people to regain the right to purchase guns.
People voluntarily committed to a mental health facility for at least 30 days, as well as those involuntarily committed after a hearing, would be barred from buying guns. The delegates kept provisions that would prevent gun purchases by people whom a judge determined incompetent to stand trial and not criminally responsible.
5 questions about Maryland’s gun-control bill
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/5-questions-about-the-maryland-gun-control-bill/2013/03/28/60cf38f8-9728-11e2-97cd-3d8c1afe4f0f_story.html
...
1Will the House committee vote to weaken O’Malley’s proposed assault-weapons ban? Will it even hold a public vote to do so?
Last week, key Democrats on the committee said they were reluctant to go along with O’Malley’s complete ban. They said the committee was weighing whether to keep semiautomatic rifles legal. The weapons were carried by shooters in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn., but are popular with sportsmen and veterans. They also have been rarely used in Maryland killings.
In recent days, however, pressure on those Democrats from gun-control advocates and the governor’s office appears to have had an effect.
On Thursday, O’Malley sent a letter to supporters with the subject line “It’s time,” noting that it had been 100 days since Newtown. The message urged Marylanders to call delegates and urge passage of his bill.
If the votes aren’t there to weaken O’Malley’s assault-weapons ban, it is unlikely that leaders of the Judiciary Committee will risk a public vote, which could expose supportive Democrats to challenges on the left in next year’s primary.
Although that scenario seems most likely, there also remains a possibility of a public fight among Democrats over the ban. If that happens, it is also possible a majority of the Judiciary could vote to weaken the ban but still be outmaneuvered.
The decision by the speaker of the House of Delegates, Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel), to co-assign the governor’s bill to two committees means it could be advanced to the full House over the objections of a majority in either committee, as long as a majority of the two combined go along. Politically, that’s a strong-arm tactic that the House speaker’s office has seemed keen to avoid.
2How will the House and Senate compromise on mental health?
House lawmakers appear likely to agree with the Senate on a tough, new restriction similar to one in Virginia that bans gun purchases by residents who are committed against their will for psychiatric treatment for any length of time.
Unlike the Senate, however, members of the HGO appear unwilling to go in the same direction regarding patients who voluntarily seek inpatient treatment.
Last month, the Senate went even further than O’Malley’s measure when it recommended banning guns from those who end up in emergency rooms with mental problems and are then taken directly to mental-health facilities, regardless of whether they go voluntarily.
There appears to be little middle ground for compromise, so will the House or Senate version win out?
3Could an even tougher mental-health provision enter the fold?
Del. Peter A. Hammen (D-Baltimore), the HGO’s chairman, has been working with the state’s psychiatric association and Del. Luiz R.S. Simmons (D-Montgomery) to craft a compromise on a bill proposed by Simmons. That measure would make it mandatory for mental-health providers to report a patient to authorities if the patient makes an overt and imminent threat of harm.
Simmons’s bill is similar to the recommendation of a legislative task force that last year said psychologists, educators, social workers and addiction-treatment counselors in Maryland should be required to report such threats to local law enforcement.
It is currently optional under Maryland law. Simmons seeks to make the reporting mandatory.
4Could the joint committee make other changes to the bill?
Simmons is hoping Hammen will put the power of his chairmanship behind the mandatory reporting requirement. But if he doesn’t, Simmons is likely to go it alone and try to persuade members of the two committees to attach the provision to the governor’s bill. It could be one of dozens of such attempts by lawmakers when the two committees get together. Forty amendments were added to the governor’s bill in the Senate.
Simmons also plans to introduce a measure that would ban gun sales to defendants who succeed in having a violent criminal conviction expunged — a far more widespread practice in Maryland than in other states with strict gun-control legislation.
5What’s the wild card?
Does House Judiciary Chairman Joseph F. Vallario Jr. (D-Prince George’s) have a trick up his sleeve? The powerful chairman is no friend of what he calls “knee jerk” legislation. The few gun bills that have passed his committee in recent years have often taken years of refinement before winning his approval.
Vallario’s power has seemingly been diluted under the joint-committee arrangement. Or has it?
-t
Assault weapons ban survives in Md. gun-control bill
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/assault-weapons-ban-survives-in-md-gun-control-bill/2013/03/29/26ac09ec-98c9-11e2-b68f-dc5c4b47e519_story.html
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley notched a victory late Friday in a House committee that had become a linchpin in his efforts to pass one of the most far-reaching legislative responses to last year’s deadly school shooting in Newtown, Conn.
After more than eight hours of debate, every major provisions of the governor’s gun-control bill, including an assault weapons ban and licensing and fingerprinting of gun buyers survived. Conservative Democrats had in recent weeks wavered on the governor’s assault weapons ban, but a core Democratic majority fiercely defended the bill against repeated challenges.
The rare joint voting session of the House Judiciary Committee and the chamber’s Health and Government Operations Committee, which share jurisdiction over the bill, was at times met with heckles and boos by hundreds of gun-rights advocates who crowded into the House office building down the street from the State House.
The crowd sighed as O’Malley’s proposed fingerprinting requirement narrowly passed an early vote. Three African American Democrats representing Baltimore City and a conservative one from Western Maryland joined Republicans in opposition to the measure.
“Why do the authorities need to retain the fingerprints,” asked Del. Nathaniel T. Oaks (D-Baltimore), who voted against the requirement, saying it would forever put the fingerprints of law-abiding gun owners alongside those of criminals in state and federal databases.
The most heated moment of the hearing came nearly five hours later when Republicans said the focus should be on criminals, not gun-owners, and appeared to win a vote to add a new law tightening prison sentences for those convicted of gun crimes. Several minutes later, House Judiciary Chairman Joseph F. Vallario (D-Prince George’s) announced that a Democrat had changed his vote and the measure, in fact, would fail. It was a nearly identical scenario to one that played out last month on the state Senate floor.
Shouts of “shame on you,” “communists,” and “we’ll remember in ’14,” rang out from the crowd and dozens stood up and left the hearing in protest. “That’s not democracy; that’s tyranny,” chimed Del. Michael D. Smigiel Sr. (R-Cecil), the author of the provision.
Republicans did win several small changes to the bill, including one spelling out that firearms that now exist in the state but that would be banned for sale as assault weapons could be willed to others.
They also won small changes protecting antique gun collectors and firearms dealers. Those in the voluntary Maryland Defense Force would also be exempt from some provisions of the governor’s new licensing requirement. (can buy/possess AW's w/out all this BS, despite that they don't use guns)
Del. Luiz R. S. Simmons (D-Montgomery) also narrowly won a change to the governor’s bill that will prevent those convicted of violent crimes but later able to get their records expunged from purchasing guns.
He failed, however, to roll back another change his colleagues advanced that would allow Marylanders to continue to purchase guns deemed assault weapons after the bill takes effect on Oct. 1, 2013, so long as purchasers show proof the sale began before October. (The waiting period is currently 45-60 days to get the background check approved, but by federal law the gun dealer is supposed to hand over the gun after 7 days if they haven't got a denied letter by then. MSP has been strong arming gun dealers not to, threatening to revoke their licenses if they do.)
“I thought the purpose of the assault ban was to ban them,” Simmons said. “We’re going to flood the state with assault weapons and then declare victory on Oct. 1 … Maryland will be armed to the teeth by the time the bill takes effect.” :D
Vincent DeMarco, president of Marylanders to Prevent Gun Violence, nonetheless said the House had succeeded in making the governor’s bill stronger. He pointed to Simmons’s amendment, and another that will require gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms within 72 hours.
Shannon Alford, a National Rifle Association lobbyist in Maryland called the evolving bill a “fundamental infringement” of Marylanders Second Amendment rights.
The most significant changes to O’Malley’s bill were contained in a set of 10 changes agreed to in principle by committee members in private meetings on Thursday night.
Those changes stripped out nearly all restrictions on current gun owners in Maryland. But most notably, did not attempt to rewrite O’Malley’s proposed assault weapons ban.
Disagreement over the ban had left the gun-control bill languishing for over a month in the House, with even some key Democrats saying an all-out ban seemed unneeded given how rarely the weapons are used in Maryland killings.
The committee changes also removed any requirement that Marylanders who currently own a gun complete training to obtain a license to buy another one in the future.
Another amendment also would prohibit the state from seeking to force residents who currently own weapons that would be classified as assault weapons from having to register those guns with the state.
Owners of some 60,000 semi-automatic weapons in Maryland would have had to have registered their weapons before next year or have faced criminal penalties, including possible jail time, under the original version of O’Malley’s bill.
The bill is now likely to dominate House floor debate in the final full week of the General Assembly.
Md. House Panels Approve Gun Control Bill
http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2013/03/29/gun-control-legislation-back-before-house-lawmakers/
...
Democratic lawmakers mostly rejected a variety of proposed changes offered by Republicans. In the end, the panels left intact a requirement for future handgun buyers to submit fingerprints to the state police, a ban on assault weapons and limiting magazine rounds to 10 bullets.
...
The bill would make $25 million available for schools to invest in security measures such as locks, cameras and buzzer entrance systems.
Gun control bill advances in House
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-house-gun-control-debate-20130329,0,6258079.story
...
Led by Republicans, gun control opponents tried unsuccessfully to strip fingerprinting provisions and shooting proficiency requirements from the handgun licensing plan. They also failed to exempt handguns from the 10-bullet magazine limit, among other unsuccessful attempts to weaken the bill.
Instead, the panel passed new rules that would create penalties for not reporting a stolen gun and bar gun ownership when people are given probation before judgment in violent crimes.
Proponents called the bill a tougher measure than the version the Senate approved, even though the House version rolled back how some provisions apply to existing gun owners. Current gun owners would not have to register their assault weapons or undergo training if they want to buy a handgun.
...
Under the new version, gun dealers would be allowed to sell their existing inventory of assault-style rifles after the ban took effect Oct. 1. Marylanders who placed orders for the guns before then could legally own them.
Del. Luiz Simmons, a Montgomery County Democrat, predicted that those moves, along with an existing spike in gun sales, would leave Maryland "armed to the teeth" before the ban could take effect. "We're going to flood the state with assault weapons and then declare victory," Simmons said.
The ban on the sale of assault-style rifles, the 10-bullet limit to magazines and a plan to require fingerprints and a license to buy a handgun were unchanged by the two House committees, which waited more than a month to act on the plan.
Del. Michael Smigiel's effort to turn the entire bill into a task force to study assault weapons failed. "We're going to be back in here next year and the year after trying to fix the damage that we're doing," said Smigiel, an Eastern Shore Republican and an outspoken gun-rights advocate.
Over the month since the Senate passed the bill, lawmakers had been debating behind the scenes whether to scale back the ban on assault rifles to exclude some models, including the AR-15. That rifle has been used in the several mass shootings, including the Newtown, Conn., killing of 20 children and six educators that prompted the Maryland legislation.
On Friday, delegates voted to keep that firearm and 44 others on the list of weapons that would be banned for sale. But they narrowed the definition of what qualifies as an assault weapon. A barrel shroud, threaded barrel, pistol grips, thumb-hole stocks and telescoping stocks would not count as features that disqualify a gun for sale.
Other changes make clear that gun manufacturers can still import and store assault weapons, as well as test them and sell them to dealers and out-of-state customers. Those manufacturers would be exempt from the limit on magazine sizes.
Beretta USA and other Maryland gun manufacturers have threatened to leave the state over the bill, and other states have courted the companies to move elsewhere.
Delegates took a slightly different approach on when to bar people with mental illnesses from buying firearms, and created a new process for those people to regain the right to purchase guns.
People voluntarily committed to a mental health facility for at least 30 days, as well as those involuntarily committed after a hearing, would be barred from buying guns. The delegates kept provisions that would prevent gun purchases by people whom a judge determined incompetent to stand trial and not criminally responsible.
5 questions about Maryland’s gun-control bill
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/5-questions-about-the-maryland-gun-control-bill/2013/03/28/60cf38f8-9728-11e2-97cd-3d8c1afe4f0f_story.html
...
1Will the House committee vote to weaken O’Malley’s proposed assault-weapons ban? Will it even hold a public vote to do so?
Last week, key Democrats on the committee said they were reluctant to go along with O’Malley’s complete ban. They said the committee was weighing whether to keep semiautomatic rifles legal. The weapons were carried by shooters in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn., but are popular with sportsmen and veterans. They also have been rarely used in Maryland killings.
In recent days, however, pressure on those Democrats from gun-control advocates and the governor’s office appears to have had an effect.
On Thursday, O’Malley sent a letter to supporters with the subject line “It’s time,” noting that it had been 100 days since Newtown. The message urged Marylanders to call delegates and urge passage of his bill.
If the votes aren’t there to weaken O’Malley’s assault-weapons ban, it is unlikely that leaders of the Judiciary Committee will risk a public vote, which could expose supportive Democrats to challenges on the left in next year’s primary.
Although that scenario seems most likely, there also remains a possibility of a public fight among Democrats over the ban. If that happens, it is also possible a majority of the Judiciary could vote to weaken the ban but still be outmaneuvered.
The decision by the speaker of the House of Delegates, Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel), to co-assign the governor’s bill to two committees means it could be advanced to the full House over the objections of a majority in either committee, as long as a majority of the two combined go along. Politically, that’s a strong-arm tactic that the House speaker’s office has seemed keen to avoid.
2How will the House and Senate compromise on mental health?
House lawmakers appear likely to agree with the Senate on a tough, new restriction similar to one in Virginia that bans gun purchases by residents who are committed against their will for psychiatric treatment for any length of time.
Unlike the Senate, however, members of the HGO appear unwilling to go in the same direction regarding patients who voluntarily seek inpatient treatment.
Last month, the Senate went even further than O’Malley’s measure when it recommended banning guns from those who end up in emergency rooms with mental problems and are then taken directly to mental-health facilities, regardless of whether they go voluntarily.
There appears to be little middle ground for compromise, so will the House or Senate version win out?
3Could an even tougher mental-health provision enter the fold?
Del. Peter A. Hammen (D-Baltimore), the HGO’s chairman, has been working with the state’s psychiatric association and Del. Luiz R.S. Simmons (D-Montgomery) to craft a compromise on a bill proposed by Simmons. That measure would make it mandatory for mental-health providers to report a patient to authorities if the patient makes an overt and imminent threat of harm.
Simmons’s bill is similar to the recommendation of a legislative task force that last year said psychologists, educators, social workers and addiction-treatment counselors in Maryland should be required to report such threats to local law enforcement.
It is currently optional under Maryland law. Simmons seeks to make the reporting mandatory.
4Could the joint committee make other changes to the bill?
Simmons is hoping Hammen will put the power of his chairmanship behind the mandatory reporting requirement. But if he doesn’t, Simmons is likely to go it alone and try to persuade members of the two committees to attach the provision to the governor’s bill. It could be one of dozens of such attempts by lawmakers when the two committees get together. Forty amendments were added to the governor’s bill in the Senate.
Simmons also plans to introduce a measure that would ban gun sales to defendants who succeed in having a violent criminal conviction expunged — a far more widespread practice in Maryland than in other states with strict gun-control legislation.
5What’s the wild card?
Does House Judiciary Chairman Joseph F. Vallario Jr. (D-Prince George’s) have a trick up his sleeve? The powerful chairman is no friend of what he calls “knee jerk” legislation. The few gun bills that have passed his committee in recent years have often taken years of refinement before winning his approval.
Vallario’s power has seemingly been diluted under the joint-committee arrangement. Or has it?
-t