Bollocks. The leadership has been playing games all along - revoting amendments, splitting the bill across House committees and so on. They started this mess; he can help to end it.
Just emailed all the senators from AA County, and I included Senator Middleton. This really is the best hope of stopping the bill. Please everyone, if you are in a conservative area (all except PG, Montgomery or Baltimore City), fill up your senator's email bucket and lock up their phone lines. Tell them a vote for cloture is a vote for the bill.
This must be the message sent. A gentleman from DeGranges office disagrees with this. Phone calls will let DeGrange know that even though he does not agree with this his constituents do!!!
Called Brochin; the young lady on the other end of the phone was very polite, and said she'd pass along the message.
I told her that I thought the bill was a gross infringement on the rights of younger Marylanders who would be much more heavily burdened, especially if FFLs started going out of business, and that I thought it was sad that my 15-year-old brother might not be able to easily take up a shooting sport because of both the restrictions on minors and the licensing requirements.
She seemed at least agreeable about it. I stressed, too, that this is a bad bill and should be passed only after serious deliberation, not rammed through because people are emotional in the wake of two admittedly horrific tragedies. If we can keep it from going through in this session, they will have a much harder time bringing it up again next year when the President and Mayor Bloomberg have stopped waving the bloody shirt.
Pointing out that it's irresponsible to rush the passage of bills constraining the exercise of a fundamental and constitutionally-enumerated right may have some effect on the fence-sitters. I hope.
Called DeGrange's office... Gave my info and explained to the young man that although I do not live in his district, my district 12A borders his and that I have quite a few relatives and friend that are registered voters in his district. Dude sighed... as if to say... Who F..ing cares? ... I love the political process... makes me feel all warm and fuzzy... (PUKE)