Response to Maryland Senate Bill 43 (Proposed Assault Weapon Ban)

This is my follow-up letter to the Senate Committee hearing SB.43, the proposed Maryland Assault Weapon Ban.


To The Committee Overseeing Maryland Senate Bill 43

Dear Senator,

I wish to take this opportunity to thank the committee for allowing me to testify in opposition to Maryland SB.43 (proposed assault weapon ban) and I would like to urge your to give this bill an UNFAVORABLE vote on March 19, 2007. The passage of this bill will do nothing but criminalize the law-abiding citizen and have no effect on violent gun crime in this state.

In support of this position, I would like to offer you the following facts to rebut the testimony provided to your committee who are in favor of this bill. It is hoped this information will be of help to you in this matter.

Mr. Paul Helmke's Remark Concerning the term “Regulated”

Paul Helmke, head of the Brady Campaign, indicated in his testimony that the Second Amendment intended for arms to be “regulated”. Mr. Helmke's testimony was dishonest and not in keeping with the intentions of the Framers of the Constitution.

The Second Amendment states: “A well-regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”.

Mr. Helmke took the term “regulated” out of context. The actual term is “well-regulated” and it has nothing to do with regulation in sense of laws, rules or restrictions. It means “to be well-disciplined” in the context of a citizen militia. Mr. Helmke is trying to twist this term to apply a modern context of what the layman would consider “well-regulated” to mean and in doing so, does not keep with the American tradition the Framers of the Constitution had intended.

For further history on the meaning of the Second Amendment, I refer you to http://www.guncite.com/gc2ndmea.html. This link traces the meaning of the Second Amendment using the words of the Founders themselves.

“Spray Fire” and “Shooting from the Hip”

Ceasefire Maryland testified the sole purpose of an assault weapon was to provide for indiscriminate killing, “shooting from the hip”, “spray firing as a weapon of war”. I have studied the combat training manuals for the US Army, US Air Force and US Marine Corps (the US Navy and Coast Guard only do familiarization and do not require formal qualification on the M16 rifle) and in none of these texts is there a single reference that firing a rifle “from the hip in a spray pattern to suppress an enemy” is an accepted tactical use of that weapon. Nor is this technique taught to any recruit in training as a proper use of their issue weapon. In fact, were a recruit were to actually do so in training, they would earn a stern rebuke at a minimum with possible outright dismissal from training for unsafe conduct.

“Spraying from the hip” has never been an accepted or taught usage of any firearm in peacetime on in a combat situation. No firearms manufacturer has ever designed a gun specifically to be fired “from the hip” and as certified rifle instructor, I have never encountered any material that has advocated this technique as a suitable shooting position.

For the mission of providing suppressive fire in combat, soldiers tasked to this duty are assigned fully automatic machine guns that are not available to civilians. They are instructed to provide this type fire by firing these weapons from a supported position from the shoulder using aimed bursts of automatic fire. They never “spray wildly”.

Ceasefire Maryland then goes on to state that a semi-automatic rifle is more dangerous that a machine gun because it is requires aiming to be effective. Huh? They are arguing that semi-automatics are more dangerous than machine guns? If so, why have machine guns been effectively banned since 1934 on the very grounds that they are considered more deadly? They can't have it both ways. Any firearm needs to be aimed in order to be effective. This type of doublespeak is put forth to push their actual agenda: a ban on all firearms.

On the Crimes, Assault Weapons and Effectiveness of Gun Control

The supporters of SB.43 raised three crimes as reasons for the necessity of an assault weapon ban in Maryland. I would like to offer the following facts for your consideration.

Dale Miller offered testimony in support of the assault weapon ban due to the death of her father at the hands of a criminal in 1994. Anyone, myself included, sympathizes with her loss. The circumstances of her father's death do not provide a justification for SB.43 for the following reasons:

1. The crime was committed in the District of Columbia, not Maryland
2. The perpetrator of the crime used a fully automatic MAC-10 machine gun, not a semi-automatic rifle. This weapon was already banned at the time of the crime.
3. Washington DC has the most stringent gun control laws in the nation. It is illegal to possess an unregistered pistol and it is illegal to have an assembled, functional firearm in the District (even within the privacy of your own home). These laws did nothing to deter the perpetrator of this horrible crime.
4. The laws against murder did not stop the perpetrator of this crime.

The 1997 North Hollywood Shooting was committed by two armed bank robbers in Los Angeles using a variety of weapons including a pair of AK-47s. These proceeded to engage police officers in a 44 minute shootout, wounding several officers and civilians before finally being killed. The circumstances of this crime do not provide a justification for SB.43 for the following reasons:

1. The crime was committed in California, not Maryland.
2. The perpetrators used fully automatic AK-47 machine guns. These had been illegally obtained and were already banned at the time of the crime.
3. The perpetrators also used a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle. This rifle had been illegally modified to fire automatically. This is a serious felony punishable by 10 years in prison or a $250,000 dollar fine. This law was no deterrent to the perpetrators.
4. The crime was committed while a comprehensive assault weapon ban was already in effect in the state of California. This law was ignored by these criminals.
5. The laws against attempted murder did not stop the perpetrators of this crime.

The Beltway Snipers killed 10 citizens in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia in October 2002 using a Bushmaster XM-15 semi-automatic rifle. This two week reign of terror was put to an end when both men were caught and eventually convicted for their crimes. Despite their use of a firearm that would be covered under SB.43, the crime does not provide a justification for SB.43 for the following reasons:

1. The firearm used in the crimes was shoplifted illegally by Lee Boyd Malvo from a gun shop in Tacoma, Washington, not Maryland. The gun shop was found negligent in this circumstance. Malvo obtained this weapon by theft and did not submit to the existing Brady background check required by a lawful purchaser.
2. Both Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allen Muhammad were not lawful permanent residents or citizens of the United States when they committed their crimes. They were not permitted under Federal, State or local laws to possess a firearm.
3. The Bushmaster rifle fires the same .223 cartridge used by many common hunting rifles. Had Malvo stolen a semi-automatic or bolt-action rifle that used the same cartridge instead, the effect on the outcome of this crime would have been no different. The Bushmaster did not possess any greater lethality over a “less-scary looking” alternative.
4. The pair ignored the numerous gun transport and possession laws for regulated firearms already in place in Maryland. These laws did not prevent the crime from happening.
5. The pair ignored the stringent gun control laws in the District of Columbia. Once again, these laws did not prevent the crime from happening.
6. The laws against murder did not stop the perpetrators of this crime.

In summary: Criminals do not obey the law!

Gun control laws like SB.43 do nothing to prevent violent crime. They only criminalize the law-abiding citizen. Any law needs to provide a provable justification to its beneficial effects on the community that far outweigh its detrimental outcomes to the law-abiding. This is especially true where Constitutionally protected rights, not state-sanctioned privileges, are at stake as is the case here. SB.43 does none of this and only strips the rights of the law-abiding citizen based solely on the appearance of a firearm and not its function.

The term “assault weapon” is an invented term by gun control groups and the media to categorize a group of firearms they don't like and to chip away at responsible gun ownership one weapon at a time. These firearms differ solely in appearance from traditional firearms. These are civilian firearms. The military does not use semi-automatic rifles as standard equipment. They are not “weapons of war”.

They are not preferred weapons of criminals since the Maryland State Police testified that they do not track these weapons and have not encountered them in any great numbers in the hands of criminals. No Maryland police officer has been killed by a rifle of any sort since 1980.

If your office has any questions or would like additional information or clarification on anything I have provided, feel free to contact me at my address provided or at ###-###-####.

Once again, I urge you to issue an UNFAVORABLE vote on SB.43. In doing so, you will uphold your support of the rights of your constituents and I will in turn give you my support for doing the right thing.

Thank you for your time and attention.


I will have more on this shortly. If you live in Maryland, please write the Senate Committee and express your opposition to this! If you own rifles or pistols in Maryland, this does affect you!