(2007-03-20) All intel we collect suggests the public really is moving past ‘assault weapon bans' as a favored public safety policy. The Brady Campaign knows this, which is why it has become increasingly shrill in calling for restrictions sooner rather than later. The correct word to describe the Brady Bunch is desperate .
One of the strongest points for us is the fact that the federal restriction lifted without calamity (as previously observed.) Middle ground voters really do shrug and ask ‘okay, so what's the problem we are solving again?' Combine this with duplicitous tactics by the Brady Bunch and effective coordination of our community's political assets (fight smart, not just hard!) and we see it is possible to work through this issue, if only we stick together.
Proponents of the assault weapons ban in the Senate timed submission of their bill, SB 43, to occur on the same day Martin O'Malley was sworn in as governor, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi present to give national attention. No doubt the party's hard left was disappointed when new leadership did not take the opportunity to bash guns on that day, as had been sought. They were even more disappointed when a companion bill was not submitted in the House. While we know they sought co-sponsors aggressively up to the deadline, in the end two factors were at play. First, they got far fewer Delegates to sign up than had been expected. Second, they listened to leadership's advice, that it was foolish politics to needlessly place its team on record with a controversial measure that was not going to pass.
Translation: Guns were not at the top of legislators' – or administrators' – hit list. For us to beg a fight otherwise is kind of like a defendant in court demanding a recount after rising to hear the jury's verdict ‘not guilty.'
How desperate is Ceasefire/Brady? HB 441 proposed in the House would levy an “assault weapon tax”, ostensibly to defray the state's $1.4 billion deficit. (We'd have to buy a lot of guns to make that up, but hey, at least at that point we'd be doing our duty…) What's really going on is Brady's desperation to get their expansive definition of assault weapons into code anywhere , even if not criminal code. Their goal is to establish a beach head in law, which validates the concept and lets them refer to it elsewhere. They're going for lowest common denominator here.
After the Senate ban, SB 43, was voted dead in committee, the bill's chief sponsor, Senator Mike Lennett, vowed to work with House gun grabbers to amend the ban into HB 441. More desperation. As a de facto ‘poll tax', 441 would not have passed on its own in the present climate. Piling major criminal provisions that already failed in the Senate onto a tax bill that already had its own baggage is a non-starter. They'll try to make noise, but it is going nowhere.
If we are winning on the issue, then gun groups should not fixate on fighting over “assault weapons.” Let the debate die. In a dramatically blue state like Maryland, the best we can hope for is that each side will walk away from it. Is that as satisfying as winning a straight up fight? Nope. But at the end of the day, our measure of success is whether we hand our successors a state that preserves the same rights we received. If we achieve that by draining our opponents' will to win instead of their ability to win, then … we still made par, given where we started politically.