Fun Turns to Tragedy!!!

The Skinny

I am a gun enthusiast trapped in the People's Republic of Maryland. My political affiliation is Independent, as the Ruling parties are both full of crap, and long ago stopped representing the common man. If the Libertarians weren't such freaks I would probably be one. I am a member of the Nation of Riflemen and damn proud of it. I once took an oath that I would support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. As far as I know I never broke that oath, and will continue to follow it. I am not Politically Correct and will NEVER be Politically Correct. If you need to know more, feel free, Ask.

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• Heller..
• Voting for the lesser evil…
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• And he wants to be President…
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• the Ammo encoding hearing.
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• Gun bills have been quiet in MD this year.
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Well it turned out well for our side for the most part.  Kind of how I expected.  Ban = Bad.  “reasonable restrictions” = ok. 

The ‘reasonable restrictions” will most likely be the next battleground.  But I do think that the “arbitrary and capricious” language is going to throw a big wrench into a bunch of those “reasonable restrictions”. 

The war is far from over.  We have been winning the concealed carry war since 1986 as this moving map shows so well…

So you can expect that our side will keep on rolling back a bunch of those “reasonable restrictions” because most of them are applied with great doses of “arbitrary and capricious”.

I just was driving around a bit this morning in Canada.  Mostly going in no particular direction but thinking a lot.  The saddest thought that I had was.  That since I became of age to vote in the presidential elections way back in the late 80s, is that there has not been a candidate that I have voted for that was not a choice between the lesser of two evils. 

I look at Ross Perot as the one exception the second time I was eligible to vote.  But he proved to be a lesser evil when he went all kookie on us late in the campaign between GB I, BJC, and himself in 1992…

That is a sad testament to the quality of candidates that run for the office of President. 

This year is even worse than most.  I have a choice between an old Democrat and a young popular Communist. Yea…

You have to love the choices our political system is giving us for President…

It is so sad to see that we have not had a great person stand up to be the leader of our nation in years.  Not since 81 in fact.

I am so tired of poor choices. 

Say Uncle posed up a link to a You Tube vid on stupid criminals. 

It looked fake to me…

But another on the page did not look fake and was far funnier…

The man is a senator and does not know how many states are in our country....

FAIL....

Found this at Red Maryland.

Too bad it is true…

Bet he still has his musket…

For all of you who celebrate…

Found at Grouchy Old Cripple…

I tried to live blog this but it did not happen.  Here is my wrap up of the day.

HB-517 hearing an all day affair: 12:45

There were quite a few bills being heard today.
The First bill was about electronic intercept of electronic messages.  Some legislator is beating this like a dead horse.  They are arguing about the difference between stored and live transmission.  Gahh.
Its like watching Bill Clinton trying to getting a definition.

The legislator that sponsored HB-517 is up : 2ish
He starts by trying to push this as a last chance for law enforcement.  Which drew more than its fair share of chuckles as ballistic fingerprinting database has solve oh so many crimes so far.
The lawmaker amended the bill to only cover pistols.  Once again trying to make it a law enforcement tool. 

Some loser from Washington State is now testifying.  He claims to be a gun owner, and a Concealed Carry permit holder.  I think the last name was Ford.  Ammunition Coding Technology is his company.  States that cops can track bullets at the crime scene.  Yep I can just see the cops now prying the bullet out of the victim in order to get out there jewelers loop to get the serial number off of the bullet.

Seems the loser from Washington is not faring well he just got shredded by a lawmaker.  then the lawmaker just drilled him as the patent holder about how much money he stands to make.  Also seems he is the sole owner of said patent
A different lawmaker also want to see a fired round.  Not just the pristine round that they were given for their examination.  He seems to have a fired round that is completely shredded.

Its not looking good for this bill and there has still been no opposition heard.  The committee members are taking care of it for us.

The bill sponsor wants to put a use by date on existing ammo.  That had me about ready to fall on the floor laughing.  He seems to be troubled that he is loosing the battle.

Another lawmaker is going after the tax and the fact that there are no ammo manufacturers in MD.  That lawmaker is also going after interstate commerce as an issue citing Hawaii’s battle with the same bill

Now the bill sponsor is trying to tell us that Maryland should be a leader for other states in fighting crime.  His last statement was that he feels that Concealed Cary would lead to bedlam.

One other lawmaker tried to defend the guy, says that there is other technology out there to make this not seem like a sole source.

Only one person testified in favor of this and she was from Baltimore…

Now that the people testifying for this bill have finished it seems we will have to wait as they are hearing other bills.

I took the time to go outside to the hallway.  There were at least 50 more people out there.  The guy from Washington State was out hobnobbing with the MD police who I am assuming are going to testify for the bill (turns out they were there for something else).  All told there were probably 150 people from our side at the meeting.

Well it is 4:40 and they are just hearing the last bill before we get our say

My bad, I just thought it was the last one as it is now 6:42 and we still have yet to have our say.  But, hey I found out that there is a bill in committee to expunge records of nuisance crimes.  So go out and drink in public, it will all be ok.

Yea.  7:19

First guy up from Remington, states that there are 8-10 billion rounds a year.  1800 rounds a minute of the assembly line and there is no way to encode at that rate.  Very well spoken.  He slams encoding very hard.  Points out the hazard of lasers around powder and primers.  I had not thought of that yet.

Next guy is from Federal.  Also dissing encoding due to automated equipment.  Also very well spoken.  Says the costs would be passed on to the consumer and police.  States that there is no technology capable of keeping up with rim fire ammunition manufacture rates

The manufactures also would have liability issues due to the tracking of the rounds from point of manufacture through the distribution to the end user.  They would not be happy with the system as envisioned.

A lawmaker asked them what the chances of them making ammo for just MD were.  He stated that they were not good. 
The lawmaker then asked if there were just a few states. 
The ammo manufactures then went in on how it would have to be a business case but even then they cost of setting up the facilities would be fairly prohibitive. 

All and all I think this thing is dead just based on the Manufactures testimony.

Now we have all the local MD orgs.  But everyone is tired, looks like this thing is as good as dead…

8:16 PM.  Finally finished.  Time for the long walk to the car.

There were other points made that I have not had time to go into yet but I think we can stick a fork in this one.

Update: Edited to correct spelling and other small details that I left out while hurrying to correct the email from my iPhone that I used to take notes during the hearing. 
Update #2:  Thanks Steve....  My spelling sucks and I know it…

FINAL UPDATE:  “Status as of March 3, 2008: Bill is in the House - Unfavorable Judiciary”

Well for the first time ever I am going down to the state capitol.  I should not have to do this but it seems the forces that want to do the same thing to this county that they have in Australia and Britain (I hesitate to put the word “Great” in front of Britain as I am not so sure it still is. (sorry Mr. Freemarket)).

Here in Maryland they seek to destroy the 2nd Amendment utilizing the back door method.  Having failed at enacting an AWB or pistol ban, and their main proponents have been voted out of office.  So now they want to effectively ban ammunition.  You see they have this cute little bill (or not so cute if you sit in my chair for a minute) HB517 which makes it a crime to sell any ammunition that is not encoded with serial numbers on the bullet and the case so they can track down who bought and shot the offending bullet or spent casing. 

Yep they are trying to pass a law banning ammunition, the reason that I say that they are banning ammunition is that there is no company that actually makes serialized ammunition.  And no company is really going to start either, as MD is a small market.  Even if there was a company that made the ammo there is no database or support infrastructure.  Even if it did exist it would probably be just as successful as the spend casing database that we spend 2 million bucks on each year and has yet to solve a crime. 

Once again they are trying to pass a law to reduce crime, instead of actually doing something like enforcing the laws on the books already.  Because prosecuting criminals is expensive where passing a new law is cheap.  Especially if they find that they can garner 5 cents per round in taxes…

After reading the bill I think they did not address the handloaders like myself.  But then they will do that in the next session to take care of the bullet loophole…

Vote for REX… Rex is going to take it in a land slide…

Vote for Rex at Countertop’s Place

I guess that after loosing a few antigun seats due to pushing the guns that look scary ban the GFWs have been pretty quiet. 

Here comes the first bad/silly gun bill this year

HOUSE BILL 517

Regulated Firearms - Encoded Ammunition - Tax

Authorizing a person to sell ammunition for a regulated firearm on or after January 1, 2009, only in accordance with the Act; requiring an ammunition manufacturer to encode ammunition for a regulated firearm in a specified way; requiring the Secretary of State Police beginning on January 1, 2009, to establish and maintain an encoded ammunition database; imposing a tax of 5 cents per round on the sale of encoded ammunition beginning on January 1, 2009; etc.

No further text is available. 

Oh so lacking in details. 

Then again when has that ever stopped the GFWs from pushing for ammunition regulations and taxes.  Maryland has been big on the Tax increases this year if you have not been following the record tax increases in the wonderful state of Maryland.

We can just write Jolly England off… Nanny ism and PC ism has won...

Well after that short little technical interruption we are back on the air.

My host said I was using up too many cycles but I think that I was wrongly accused as my wife’s site and mine are tiny and generate few hits a day.  Well hopefully we will still be on the air when you next check back.

Well it looks like Pro Gun Progressive finally has gotten his unrestricted carry permit for Maryland. It is a shame that the MD state police did not want to issue it and did almost everything in their power to deny his permit. 

Too bad for the rest of us peasants, because unless you are connected you are not going to get one.  Unfair.  Yea but we keep electing GFWs so that is the status quo.  Can’t wait to leave this socialist paradise.

Here is a map of the reality of the rest of the country…

Yellow means that the state gets to decide that you are not worthy even if you do pass the background check…