Repeal of AWB/ Mag limits?

[mark056]

Gun ownership is neither a liberal or conservative issue. It's a civil rights issue and Im tired of "culture bundling" to borrow a term from another site. How I stand on the 2A might be different than how I might stand on the topic we don't discuss here. I'd just as soon eliminatel all relgious themed holidays from the public schools and take "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance (wasn't there when I first learned it)

Far too many push their other political agendas into the 2A arena.

Give the OP a break and .500 batting average is very good. What he's proposing is unlikely to happen but should be visited from time to time.

 

[the_shootist]

Gun ownership is neither a liberal or conservative issue. It's a civil rights issue and Im tired of "culture bundling" to borrow a term from another site. How I stand on the 2A might be different than how I might stand on the topic we don't discuss here. I'd just as soon eliminatel all relgious themed holidays from the public schools and take "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance (wasn't there when I first learned it)

Far too many push their other political agendas into the 2A arena.

Give the OP a break and .500 batting average is very good. What he's proposing is unlikely to happen but should be visited from time to time.

Well said!

 

[Knuckle Dragger]

If by petition you mean ballot initiative, you're barking up the wrong tree. Most of us here at NES feel strongly that so called 'assault weapons' and 'high-capacity' magazines are just the kind of 'arms in common use' that the framers had in mind when crafting the Second Amendment.

Rights are protected, in part, to protect individuals from the tyranny of the majority. As such, you'd never want to subject the exercise of a fundamental, enumerated right to a majority vote of the populace. What would have happened, if rather than staging the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rosa Parks and the NAACP had circulated a petition?

 

[SMASHING MACHINE]

The amount of slack-jawed phaggotry here sometimes... god damnit. Some of the responses to these threads are rife with it. The whole state is experiencing significant testicular atrophy. Your females putting their estrogen pills in your morning coffee?

I digress. OP, good post. When is the last time any of us put forth an effort like this? It doesn't take the whole state to get it on someones desk... maybe make a back page headline... get GOAL involved. I would back it.

 

[rudiewhitebwoy]

We obviously break a metric ton of balls here, but you're right, there exists a process to get that accomplished. I'm in NH now, but when I lived down there I tried to make rallies and donate when I could to who I felt were trying to enact change. On paper, it looks good, but the reality of it happening is minimal. I guess I'm just pessimistic when it comes to Mass and gun rights.

NH, I can't wait to get there. Hoping to have property there by 2016 and be a full time resident by the end of the decade. If gun rights were the only problem this state had I'd be hesitant to move but this state has been going in the wrong direction on so many things for so many years it'd be like shoveling shit against the tide to turn things around.

Gun ownership is neither a liberal or conservative issue. It's a civil rights issue and Im tired of "culture bundling" to borrow a term from another site. How I stand on the 2A might be different than how I might stand on the topic we don't discuss here. I'd just as soon eliminatel all relgious themed holidays from the public schools and take "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance (wasn't there when I first learned it)

Far too many push their other political agendas into the 2A arena.

Give the OP a break and .500 batting average is very good. What he's proposing is unlikely to happen but should be visited from time to time.

Well, I know conservatives that are anti-gun but I know a much higher percentage of liberals that are anti-gun. I think it's because I live in Mass. There a loads of Southern/Mid West/Western Dems in the more Rural parts of the US that love their guns. The House of Representatives found that out the hard way during the Clinton administration.

I've taken many anti-gun people or people that had no opinion either way shooting, I only batting about .350 but I can say I'm directly responsible for at least 5 people getting their LTC and 5 more I'm trying to get over the hump. It's an uphill battle but can be quite rewarding to have anti re-thinking their position after an hour at the range.

 

[TLB]

If by petition you mean ballot initiative, you're barking up the wrong tree. Most of us here at NES feel strongly that so called 'assault weapons' and 'high-capacity' magazines are just the kind of 'arms in common use' that the framers had in mind when crafting the Second Amendment.

Rights are protected, in part, to protect individuals from the tyranny of the majority. As such, you'd never want to subject the exercise of a fundamental, enumerated right to a majority vote of the populace. What would have happened, if rather than staging the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rosa Parks and the NAACP had circulated a petition?

Have there been any good opportunities to pursue this or are these charges never pursued alone, but only in conjunction with other criminal charges?

 

[hminsky]

All snotty replies aside, I have tried actually talking with my state representatives about some of the gun bills that have come up for vote from time to time. In Newton this was of course an utterly ineffective waste of breath, but let's give a few props for someone at least having the initiative of trying something.

That said, you have to have a lot of ducks carefully lined up to realistically have any hope of bringing MA gun laws into line with the majority of the country.

Taking friends who have never fired a gun to the range is still the most effective thing you can do to lobby for change, by a large factor.

 

[browncoat]

I guess my thinking was that according to Mass amendment 48, in order to get a new law/ amendment to the ballot you need 10 signatures initially to have it reviewed by the AG. Then you need an additional 64,750 signatures to get this sent to legislature. If approved by the legislature, you need 10,792 more signatures and it get placed on the next Mass ballot.

The latest figures i can find place the number of Mass class A LTC holders at 378,642 for 2015. Considering this does not include, class B, FID, pro 2A people with out a license, and people that cleaning up laws might appeal to, it doesn't seem that far fetched. I understand there are 4 million voters in MA but considering most of the polls I see place support of 2A around 50% who is to say it can't be done?

I will continue to pay insane prices for pre bans guns and mags for the time being and do research I guess...

The danger of a referendum is that if we don't win, if we instead lose decisively that could be leveraged as popular support for further restriction on what we have now. For example, what if someone says, "Did you know that there is a loophole in the AWB, which 70% of MA voters support?" and then boom, the preban loophole is gone. You can say that would be an illegal seizure, but it happened already in other states (Hawaii at least).

 

[hminsky]

The danger of a referendum is that if we don't win, if we instead lose decisively that could be leveraged as popular support for further restriction on what we have now. For example, what if someone says, "Did you know that there is a loophole in the AWB, which 70% of MA voters support?" and then boom, the preban loophole is gone. You can say that would be an illegal seizure, but it happened already in other states (Hawaii at least).

Yes that is exactly right. There is this guy at Harvard, Larry Lessig, who tried to bring a case to the Supreme Court regarding the excessive copyright extensions (Eldred v. Ashcroft) that companies had bought off congress to keep passing into law. He is not the great legal mind he thinks he is, and he ****ed it up royally, and now the case law is much harder change.

 

[rivet_42]

Have there been any good opportunities to pursue this or are these charges never pursued alone, but only in conjunction with other criminal charges?

Solo AWB prosecutions have been rare in MA. They have happened. A partial list is here. You're correct in that usually, "Unlawful possession of a large capacity feeding device" is a pile-on charge to a raft of other charges regarding unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition, and whatever other underlying crime (e.g. assault, robbery, drug dealing) the person allegedly committed. Because there's usually an underlying crime involved, the appellants in these cases tend to be pretty unsympathetic, and it's hard to paint them as victims.

Prosecution of "unlawful possession of an assault weapon" (i.e. a rifle with an illegal combination of cosmetic features) is rare because such rifles are rarely used to commit crimes, and because police in Mass. don't generally go to shooting ranges looking to jam people up on violations, unlike California where they do exactly that.

The ideal appellant for a case hoping to overturn the AWB would be, I imagine, someone who was otherwise a lawful firearms owner (LTC, etc.) but had gotten jammed up somehow. New resident, not yet licensed, with a post-ban rifle in the safe, maybe. Or someone who had inadvertently been sold an illegal rifle by a dealer and didn't realize what he had. I could swear I've read about cases where someone went into a gun shop, bought a new handgun that should have come with 10-round magazines, got it home, unpacked it, and realized there were standard-cap mags in the box.

 

[Rob Boudrie]

take "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance (wasn't there when I first learned it)

It was put in by congress specifically to make it clear the US was a religious nation.

SCOTUS has ruled it has nothing to do with religion.'

go figure.