IMPORTANT NOTICE for all gunowners House Bill H2259

Only recently became aware of bill H2259. My letters have been sent to encourage the bill get out of committee and passed. People who have been falsely denied their rights will be able to have this corrected.
 
I bet he interprets the 1A a lot different than the 2A...

Maybe he's consistent. Maybe he feels that local police chiefs should be using their discretion to decide whether or not they need a warrant to search his house or person. Maybe he feels that they should use their discretion to decide whether he can be compelled to testify against himself, or his spouse.








Or maybe he's just a douchebag.
 
It was bugging me so I looked it up. I merged MA law with federal. MA has the sunset, the feds do not. And it is 2 years with state convictions, one with federal court convictions. The feds also don't make any distinctions between misdemeanor and felony. That is MA who does. Sorry. There are so many variations of this cap I can't keep them straight.

Actually, the feds DO make a distinction- especially WRT the Lautenberg amendment. A misdemeanor of domestic violence is also a DQ. EG, if your wife slaps you in the face, an overzealous LEO notices it in a mandatory DV state, she is up the creek... awhile ago (years?) the NRA was making noise about this, about how Lautenberg is way too broad in this manner, and that people who aren't a typical abuser can get caught up by the law. They highlighted a case where a husband/wife spat resulted in LEOs being called, and when the LEOs came it was discovered that she had like ripped the pocket of her husbands pants or some crap like that... neither one wanted to press charges, but the LEOs had to charge her under a mandatory DV statute. (I think it was VA, or one of those states where the system essentially forces prosecution on anything that looks like DV). She got convicted, served no time, and is now a prohibited person because she tore someone's pants... [thinking]

-Mike
 
Actually, the feds DO make a distinction- especially WRT the Lautenberg amendment. A misdemeanor of domestic violence is also a DQ. EG, if your wife slaps you in the face, an overzealous LEO notices it in a mandatory DV state, she is up the creek... awhile ago (years?) the NRA was making noise about this, about how Lautenberg is way too broad in this manner, and that people who aren't a typical abuser can get caught up by the law. They highlighted a case where a husband/wife spat resulted in LEOs being called, and when the LEOs came it was discovered that she had like ripped the pocket of her husbands pants or some crap like that... neither one wanted to press charges, but the LEOs had to charge her under a mandatory DV statute. (I think it was VA, or one of those states where the system essentially forces prosecution on anything that looks like DV). She got convicted, served no time, and is now a prohibited person because she tore someone's pants... [thinking]

-Mike

I know this is somewhat off topic, but a little bump can't hurt...I was at some firearms training recently where they stressed that if you want to own and carry guns, get along with your spouse and don't drink before/during an argument.

The instructor quoted a study that was done in the military after Lautenberg amendment passed, and several career military guys were kicked out because they suddenly became federally prohibited because of 20-30 year old charges on their records. In this study they found that the overwhelming majority of the military men who had these DV convictions weren't life long abusers or nutcases, but were guys who got in arguments that went a little too far one night, or something similar, but very minor stuff. Almost none of them had more than one charge ever documented, which highlights that they're not the "dangerous abuser" that the law was passed to protect us from.

I'm going to do some digging to see what else I can find on it. I don't support domestic violence in any way shape or form, but I think that a lot of really petty stuff gets taken way too far WRT Lautenberg.
 
Update: GOAL’s Civil Rights and Public Safety Bill Gets Extension Order

According to Joint Rule 10 of the Massachusetts legislature all joint committees must act on bills by mid March. GOAL’s bill is within the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security. The committees have a choice of several options when acting on legislation. They can place it in a “study order”, release it as “ought to pass” or “ought not to pass” or as in the case of GOAL’s bill H.2259 “An Act Relative to Civil Rights and Public Safety” the committee can file for an extension order.
Although the Committee did not release H.2259 as ought to pass, they did ask for an extension order. This is actually fairly good news as this would tend to mean they wish to continue working on it this session.
 
Interesting. I use a dedicated email account to email my legislators.
As soon as I sent the email out to all of those addresses I immediately get a bunch of out-of-office replies as well as a cute phishing scam email which I have never received on this email account before.

Nice.
 
There is one issue here that bothers me. Please see the following quote:

"The categories include a person indicted of a crime punishable by up to a year in jail..."

"Punishable by" and "indicted" seem like dubious distinctions. Maximum peanalties are usually extremely harsh compared to the offense and are applied for misdemeanors only in very rare circumstances. Today, someone has to be found guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by two years or more in order to be disqualified for life. It seems that there are two new stipulations with this bill. The penalty has been reduced from two years to one, and the violator only has to be "indicted" to be disqualified.

So, to use a silly example, if someone steals a hubcap where they are 18 and the police decide to make an example of them and file charges, even if they aren't found guilty, they can be disqualified for life. Am I reading this correctly?

As far as indictments go, it says...any person who is under indictment, not who has been under indictment. Which leads me to believe that they don't want to arm a person who has reasons to"eliminate" witnesses during a trial.
 
Everyone, please call, write, and email the legislators on the committee for H 2259 and ask that they release it with a favorable report ASAP.

Contact info for them here.


This was back in March. Still nothing! Keep calling and writing!
 
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