Turnout in Annapolis

Fresh from Maryland Shall-Issue:

Yesterday Maryland Shall Issue, in concert with the NRA, the Associated Gun Clubs of Baltimore, staged the largest “Gun Day” rally in the history of our state – official state estimates count 4,000 pro-rights supporters who converged at our statehouse for a morning rally and afternoon hearings in the Senate.

We literally shut the place down. Soon after the hearing, I got a call from the MD Capital Police. They told us the building was already at maximum capacity and that fire code meant no more entrants.

This was more than a rally. Our people all showed up to attend the hearing and to testify. Even after locking out our many members, there would be more than 1,000 people in line to testify. Just getting your name on the list of witnesses took six hours. Every person stood in line, eager to get their voices heard. Unfortunately, the chairman of the committee – Senator Brian Frosh – is a the largest Gun Control Advocate in the state. He decided to unilaterally cut off testimony after 4 hours from each side. Even when reduced, the Gun Controllers ran out witnesses. They had them on the list to testify, but after 5 PM many were no where to be found. They were mostly government employees – it looks like their interest in Gun Control ended when the paychecks ran out. The Chairman eventually reduced “testimony” to nothing more than your name and town. That’s it. That was was his idea of how to let people petition their government. Our side went until they literally told us to leave. The last name was spoken at almost 10 PM.

We had an effect. Publicly many admit that licensing is dead; that registration is about to fail; and privately there is talk that even the AWB is at risk. They are splitting the Governor’s bill into smaller bills, because as of today they big one would not pass either chamber.

We are not guaranteed a final win on everything. But this was supposed to be a cake walk for them, and the people of this state are going to make them work for it.

Maryland Shall Issue has been asked what we would compromise – whether we could “throw them a bone.” We told them that we would not compromise a single right. They told us that means we could lose. Our membership is united: we would rather have all of our rights stolen from us, than to willingly give up even one.

Everyone keep us in their prayers. We are holding our line in this fight. Pray we hold it until the end.

Good show! It is unfortunate that when a legislature gets in its mind to do something, it can be a beast to stop, but hopefully we’ll weather through, and keep punching back twice as hard.

UPDATE: Here’s the WaPo article.