Kilroy
Ultimate Member
- Jul 27, 2011
- 3,069
This NSSF guy is really good.
So, for complex reasons, I couldn't leave the house until 1030 this morning. I thought, no problem, I'm only 15 minutes from Annapolis; I can take the back roads to one of several parking garages and score. As I was driving in on West Street, I was struck by how little traffic there was. Then I saw the sign: West Circle closed from 9 AM-1 PM. "No problem," I thought, "I'll just park in the garage proximal to the circle." Well, the police shut down West St. at the Toyota dealership WAY before the circle. As I turned right under police direction, I also saw that Spa Road was closed inbound. The only other way I was familiar with to get into Annapolis was via Rt 50 and Rowe Blvd. Of course, as others have noted, the Rowe Blvd exit was a parking lot, even before Parole. I finally made my way onto Rowe Blvd, only to see that literally a thousand cars were lining up in the right lane to park at the Navy lot. I stayed in the left lane over the bridge, and decided to park in a sneaky (but not technically illegal) place 200 yards from the rally. My naive plan was to run in to sign up to speak, lazily return to my car, change into my suit in the public bathroom nearby, get some lunch, then return at 1300 to testify. In retrospect, that was Fantasy Island thinking.
With the help of a kind female Md Senate staffer, I quickly made my way through the rally crowd to the Senate building, where I went through security around 1145. There I saw that the line to sign in to testify went approximately 100 yards to the stairs, then wrapped around the circular stairs and back and forth on the second floor. I guesstimate that there were about 1000 people standing in line (and perhaps more). After speaking to a cool former Marine (Semper Fi), he kindly agreed to save my spot while I went to deliver my written testimony (all 20 copies) just before they stopped taking them at noon. I must have passed the actual sign in place, but it was quite inconspicuous. I marveled that there weren't 10 or 20 volunteers at a table to take people's signatures efficiently...democracy in inaction, I guess. By the time I returned to the line, it had moved perhaps 10 feet in 10 minutes. I did the math, and realized that I would be able to sign in to speak on Wednesday by Thursday afternoon, at the earliest. One guy with a 2A button who was standing next to the line stated that when he had signed in 1.5 hours before, the list of people wanting to testify was already 10 pages long. I reckoned that I had done my part for the cause.
I thus went outside to the rally, which I estimate conservatively at ~3 thousand around noon. Sadly, there were far too many 2A supporters who chose to exercise their right to smoke cigarettes in a crowd. Since I have medical conditions (plural) that make me very sensitive to smoke, I wandered back to my sneaky but legal parking place to drive home. On my way out, I saw hundreds of people still streaming in across the College Creek bridge at 1215, with hundreds more taking the shuttle bus, and an unknown but large number of cars lined up to come into Annapolis on Rowe Blvd.
A few observations:
1) Tom Toles has an extremely timely cartoon today in the Washington Post: http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/im.../Editorial-Opinion/Graphics/toles02062013.jpg I really did feel disenfranchised by the poor planning on the part of the Maryland Senate support staff with regard to the mechanism for citizens to sign up to testify. It is the 21st century. Could there not be some electronic mechanism devised, including a requirement for name, address, phone number, and any other reasonable information that was required at the sign in log? Would someone please share what info was asked at the sign in log? I bet fingerprints and retinal scans weren’t involved…though you wouldn’t know that from the slowness of the line. I'm pretty sure that nothing on the log could not reasonably be submitted by e-mail weeks in advance, if someone at the Senate cared enough to improve access for Maryland citizens. I would challenge our elected officials to name one other place where people are expected to line up for 4-5 hours before being able to exercise a constitutionally-protected right (besides voting in minority areas, that is).
2) The Park Annapolis website is down for the count from the punishing hits all of you provided from your smart phones while looking for parking places. I guess the SEO work they did or money they paid to get them to the top of a Google search for "park Annapolis" (with or without quotes) didn't help them as much as they expected, at least today.
3) The crowd at the rally was very diverse and peaceful. Not everyone was an overweight, older, balding, white, male, ex-military member with a military or NRA hat like myself...only about half. Sadly, 103% of the people in the crowd chose to smoke cigarettes.
4) I did not see any organized counter-rally of anti-gun activists.
5) I have a hard time believing that the Md Senate did not know President Obama was visiting Annapolis on 6 Feb...or that the White House was not aware that Maryland would be Ground Zero for the fight to protect our 2nd Amendment rights in 2013, before it's too late. I am not usually a conspiracy nut, but, given that the Senate meeting is traditionally held in Cambridge, MD on the Eastern Shore, it seems just too coincidental that I was almost prevented from exercising my rights as a citizen of Maryland to submit my written testimony because of the (necessary) security surrounding the President.
6) Rule number one of sneaky parking: You don't talk about where sneaky parking is (in case I need to return to help defeat the bill when it reaches the Maryland House of Delegates).
To those of you who successfully managed to sign up to testify and are staying all night: Best of Luck! Go get 'em! Hope the bathroom cleaning staff keeps up with demand!
Bravo Zulu,
Sadly, 103% of the people in the crowd chose to smoke cigarettes.
this was absolutely amazing. and i have something to say about the crowd...i've never been involved in a rally like this, and i want to applaud the lot of you. everyone was polite, respectful, chatty, and just plain NICE. thanks for helping to put a human face on what so many think is an evil monster, guys.
Jenni is saying she saw me on the channel 2 news tonight. I do good? Im the teacher in the red polo