next stop after 3/7: House hearings 3/9 & 3/14

3/7 is the Senate Judiciary hearing on the so-called "castle doctrine."

From THR:

Maryland Senate Committee to Consider Castle Doctrine Next Week!
Please Contact the Judicial Proceedings Committee Today!

Next Thursday, March 7, the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee will hold a public hearing on SB 518, sponsored by State Senator Nancy Jacobs (R-34). The bill, which has strong bipartisan support from 14 co-sponsors, makes much-needed reforms to Maryland's self-defense laws.

The proposed reforms of Maryland's self-defense laws would accomplish three things:

- The bill would establish, in law, the presumption that a criminal who unlawfully enters or intrudes into your home or occupied vehicle is there to cause death or great bodily harm, and you may therefore use any manner of force, including deadly force, against that person.

- The bill would state in law that you have no duty to retreat if you are attacked in a place where you have a right to be present, if you are not the original aggressor, and if you are not engaged in criminal activity.

- The bill would protect persons using force authorized by law from lawsuits filed by injured criminal attackers or their families.

The members of the Judicial Proceedings Committee need to hear from you.

Please contact the Committee members and voice your support for SB 518. Respectfully urge the Committee members that self-defense is a fundamental American right, and law-abiding citizens should be able to exercise that right without the fear of criminal prosecution.

Be sure to tell them that in the past two years, 16 other states have passed this critical legislation, and that Maryland should do so as well.

The contact phone number and members of the Senate Judicial Proceeding Committee are listed below!

Committee phone number:

(410) 841-3623 Annapolis/Balitmore area or (301) 858-3623 Washington, D.C. area.

Committee Members:

Brian Frosh (D-16) Chair

Lisa Gladden (D-41), Vice-Chair

Jim Brochin (D-42)

Jennie Forehand (D-17)

Larry Haines (R-5)

Nancy Jacobs (R-34)

Alexander Mooney (R-3)

C. Anthony Muse (D-26)

Jamie Raskin (D-20)

Bryan Simonaire (R-31)

Norman Stone, Jr. (D-6)

The (misnamed) Castle Doctrine bill is something I just heard about, but will support by letter-writing since my vacation days are set. I won't harp on the misnomer, but support the bill's premise.

The House CCW bill is being heard next Friday 3/9, along with the MoCo preemption attack. Support MSI's getting Suzanne Hupp to testify by contributing to help pay her expenses (http://www.marylandshallissue.org, scroll to bottom of home page)

Please, please sign up on 3/9 to oppose the MoCo bill, even if you are fortunate enough not to live here. The MoCo Senate delegation is supposedly gridlocked on the bill, so it may never get introduced in the Senate, but we need to kill it at the House. (More on the gridlock here: http://www.gazette.net/stories/02280...15_32325.shtml)

Here is one brave response to the MoCo preemption attack:

http://www.gazette.net/stories/02280...45_32370.shtml

Caring about constitutional rights
Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2007

Del. Roger P. Manno (D-Dist. 19) of Silver Spring should get an award for the most dramatic double-speak of the year (‘‘Gun bill backed by House delegation,” Feb. 21 article).(K-Rom: article is the linked "gridlock" story)

His comments that he is not ‘‘an anti-gun nut” and that ‘‘Charles County sportsmen who are more concerned about Second Amendment rights” at once confirms a belief in the individual right to own and bear arms and a belief that the Constitution can be ignored if he finds it personally inconvenient.

Yes, Delegate Manno is an anti gun nut. Exactly where does he get off thinking that the sportsmen of Montgomery don’t care as much about Second Amendment rights as their counterparts in Charles, or any other county for that matter?

What Delegate Manno apparently means is that there are more gun owners per capita in Charles County and so the individual rights, which he affirmed, of gun owners in Montgomery County can be abrogated through some perverted sense of majority rule. Fortunately for the residents of all of Maryland, and Silver Spring in particular, the U.S. Constitution doesn’t yet work that way.

Delegate Manno owes an apology to all of the gun owners of Montgomery County for this insult to their intelligence and citizenship.

Brian B., Bethesda

Here is what we are facing here daily in MoCo while merely trying to go about our business:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...101430_pf.html

11 Youths Arrested In Gang Stabbings
3 Hurt in Assaults At Wheaton Metro, Aspen Hill Area

By Lori Aratani and Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 2, 2007; B01

Eleven young gang members, including a 12-year-old, are facing attempted murder charges in connection with a rampage in Wheaton and Aspen Hill on Saturday that ended with a mentally challenged Silver Spring man being beaten and stabbed, Montgomery County police said yesterday.

Two of them also are accused of a double stabbing that occurred earlier that evening at the Wheaton Metro station. All three victims survived, but the Silver Spring man is hospitalized in critical condition.

The suspects, all males ages 12 to 17, claim to be members of the "Hotboyz/Shoot 'Em Up" gang, police said. They have been charged with attempted first-degree murder, robbery and assault. Some of their parents reached yesterday evening said they are being falsely accused. . . (more)

This hits home: this is the second incident at that Metro stop and vicinity within the past few months involving gang mob attacks. I have to use that Metro during the week to go to work every day with my wife and kid. MD needs CCW, and does NOT need BS MoCo disarming my family to make those thugs' jobs easier when they decide to "get in on" the home invasions averaging one-per-week here in MoCo.