Thursday, February 20, 2014

VA-ALERT: Legislative update - games the Senate plays

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I warned that if the anti-liberty Democratic leadership in the Senate got control during the special elections, we would be seeing all kinds of shenanigans. It's not that I am a seer, I just saw what happened the last time they were in power.

Well, on Monday, Delegate Carr's HB 810 came up in front of the Senate Courts of Justice committee. This bill started as a "celebratory gunfire" bill, with all the same worthless language that Senator Marsh's version, SB 65, had. The House Courts of Justice committee changed the bill and threw Delegate Carr a bone by totally rewriting it from a "celebratory gunfire" bill to a "malicious wounding" bill. VCDL then went from "strongly oppose" to "neutral" as the bill was no longer just a duplicate of current law, but actually did something useful.

When HB 810 arrived at the Senate Courts of Justice committee, the committee leadership (Senators Marsh and McEachin) skipped the normal protocols that would have allowed the public to speak on the bill (heck, even Carr didn't get to speak on her own bill) and Senator Marsh immediately said the committee was going to put the bill back into its original "celebratory gunfire" form to match SB 65. Senator McEachin quickly made the motion to do so and, with a total elapsed time of around 30 seconds, the House's changes were thrown away and the bill reported out of committee. It now heads to the Senate Floor where it will most likely pass in its reverted form and head back to the House as amended.

VCDL's position on HB 810 is now once again "strongly oppose."

What will happen next is most likely a showdown between the House and the Senate over the two different versions of the bill. I will be surprised if SB 65 and HB 810 aren't both killed.



Also on Monday Blooberg's group "Mothers Demand Action" was supposed to have a "stroller jam" to try to resurrect Senator Favola's "misdemeanors take away gun rights" bill, SB 510, from the dead. They had all of two strollers and a handful of members. I was looking around to see if there was a closet somewhere they could jam, but most were too big. They also had a press conference to pressure the House Courts of Justice to bring back the bill. But, in the end, rigor mortis had set in and the bill remained dead. ;-)

Press coverage:

From wtvr.com: https://tinyurl.com/n6mpbun

From godanriver.com: http://tinyurl.com/n8pdh9d

From dailypress.com: http://tinyurl.com/lucotyn

From wric.com: http://tinyurl.com/mlawsqy

From timesdispatch.com: http://tinyurl.com/k89l8ll

From wtkr.com: http://tinyurl.com/myztwx6



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