Sign up for the referendem on 281 here.

[Jack Ryan]

Look what the court system did to us in the Wollard case. What makes anyone think they will treat SB281 differently?

I agree.

 

[occbrian]

POSTPONING ACCOMPLISHED NOTHING.

IT JUST DELAYS OUR DAY IN COURT AND GIVES YOU MORE TIME TO BUY TOYS. THAT IS ALL.

 

[Jack Ryan]

POSTPONING ACCOMPLISHED NOTHING.

IT JUST DELAYS OUR DAY IN COURT AND GIVES YOU MORE TIME TO BUY TOYS. THAT IS ALL.

Please take off your caps lock, no reason to shout in here friend...we are all on the same team.

 

[ELEMENT94]

The Charge of the Light Brigade, 2014

You guys are going to pull us all over the cliff into a political Grand Canyon if you continue to pursue this referendum course. It will be a political blunder of monumental proportions.

If you want to see Maryland law, a few years down the road, looking like what gun owners in New York, Connecticut, and California now face, the referendum route is the way to go. Another way to say it: If you want Baltimore and the DC suburb counties' delegations in the legislature to have even more power to set statewide gun policy in the future, that's the way to do it.

The electorate will ratify the bill, especially after they've been presented with biased summary of the law to vote on ("should there be a ban on high-powered semiautomatic assault rifles with military features and high-capacity magazines. . . ") and months of propaganda (both paid ads and "news" coverage) on TV.

The lost of losing -- and it won't be close -- will be great. In modern American history, there are not many examples of state legislatures going in exactly the opposite direction from what the electorate has just done in a referendum. The usual pattern is for the legislatures to say "the electorate has spoken, now we have a mandate to give them more of the same." You can find a couple exceptions, but they were not in states like Maryland.

The resources should be devoted to defeating specific legislators in specific districts who voted in favor of the restrictions despite the urging of well-informed blocs of gun-owners in their districts. You pick opportune districts where it is possible to vote bums out -- which would be mostly districts outside the most urbanized areas. The defeat of a fairly small number could have a great sobering effect on the legislature, particularly on the Senate side, if it was seen that support for the attack on gun owners was the decisive or a decisive factor. Many of the urban anti-gun legislators have tailor-drawn districts that it is practically impossible for them to loose, even in a primary. The good news is that the anti voters are also packed into those same districts, so they cannot vote to save the legislators whose districts are more diverse.

But by forcing a statewide referendum, you give away all your advantages of being able to pick your battlegrounds and you give away the advantage of localized intensity and organization. You turn it into a game of money -- Bloomberg could spend many millions on TV ads if necessary -- do you have millions? You turn it into a game in which the news media will sway many -- how do you think that will go? You turn it into a statewide game of raw numbers. Those TV ads will turn out the voters you want to stay home. The final outcome will look like a Washington Post poll on "gun violence." And the crushing defeat will nullify the sobering effects of knocking off some bums in the election, should that occur.

This enter notion needs to be subjected to much careful and analytical consideration, if you don't want 2014 to be the year that pro-gun forces in Maryland went down to bitter defeat in the political equivalent of the Charge of the Light Brigade.

This x 1000000

 

[Jim12]

What you're missing Travler is that a court decision would only overturn 1 part of the bill.
This Referendum gives us the chance to Overturn the whole enchilada.
Who knows how many years it would take to get rid of this bill in the court system piece by piece by piece. Who even says we will win ANY case against this in court?
We thought we had a chance with Wollard.
We as a Nation thought we had a chance of the SCOTUS overturning Obamacare.
Thinking a loss on the Referendum would embolden MD Gov't more? Well that's not possible. Look how they treated us with this bill. It would be nearly impossible for them to be more arrogant. They didn't care what we thought before, they don't care what we think now, and they certainly won't care what we think in the future.

The Referendum would also give us up to November 2014 to buy more regulated guns and accessories. If we just wait and "try" to take this to court we only have until October of this year. Now that most people know that SB281 passed, what do you think the MSP average wait of 45-50 days will jump up to. Some peoples purchases may not make the 10/01/13 deadline.

There is ZERO guarantee we can win with a Referendum. I am well aware of how this state votes.
There is also ZERO guarantee we could win in court. Not to mention the cost of court cases. Look at the time and money already spent by 1000's of us already in the fight against SB281.
We NEED to use every avenue available to us and the next road is REFERENDUM.

After the passing of SB281, I'd personally rather see the money that I donate to MSI go towards the education of MD voters to give us a better chance on both a Ref vote and removing the incumbents from office.

There is ZERO chance that we would win a referendum. There is EVERY LIKELIHOOD that the bad result will be used against us in every conceivable way. Kaboom.

 

[Jim12]

AND if nothing else it will postpone the bill going into effect till November 2014

And potentially postpone a Supreme Court decision until after a conservative retires and BO appoints a leftist successor.

 

[rambling_one]

Majority rule isn't the issue.

Never tie a constitutionally protected civil right to a referendum.

 

[jorjohn11]

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