WA: Pro Gun Candidate Needs Help

Josey1

Thank's for accessing GUNEDTm
Our President Mike W. Smith is running for a seat in State Congress. Will you support him? Every freedom loving American should realize that we need TRUE leadership now: Mike W. Smith. I'm going to need a lot more votes than this! We don't need money, we don't need any other help but the help that comes from the voter.

Please read Mike's write up in the Columbian News Paper. They took a lot out of context, but that is to be expected from a Liberal Media: Columbian Paper. GUNEDTm would like you to know that we need to support every Pro II candidate and any other Pro Freedom people running for office. The only way we can change the laws, will be from the inside out. The system in it's current form is NOT abiding by the law, and hasn't for some time now.
Get involved. Check your local districts and the candidates that are running for office in your area. Ask them hard questions, check their past employment. If they are incumbents, find and look at their voting record and the bills they supported, endorsed, or authored.

And most important: VOTE!

Do you like guns or do you support bans on firearms? Here's the law:
1- Freedom of Speech
2- Freedom to possess Firearms

These two Rights in the Peoples most profound Document are to be followed by law. Whether you like it or not, the Second Amendment in the United States Constitution is the only way to keep us free as a people in this Country, and it has over 20,000 illegal laws attached to it. How have we let a RIGHT turn into a PRIVILEGE?

Thank you
GUNED.COMr
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What a joke! Is the elite the only ones that will have personal protection these days?

We need to get to work right away. Support GUNEDTm and our efforts.

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"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878

Edited by - josey1 on 09/19/2002 05:52:17

Edited by - josey1 on 09/19/2002 05:53:41

Josey1

Ehrlich clarifies gun panel remark
Candidate says statement about board misconstrued; Townsend using his comments

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By Sarah Koenig
Sun Staff
Originally published September 18, 2002



As anti-gun advocates continued to characterize him as a pawn of the National Rifle Association, Republican gubernatorial candidate Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. clarified yesterday a statement he made about the state's Handgun Roster Board, contending that he never said he would seek to get rid of it.

On Friday, Ehrlich said he would "review" the state's gun control programs "to see what's working." The two he mentioned were the ballistic fingerprint program, in which state police keep track of shell casing data, and the Handgun Roster Board, which approves all handguns before they can be sold in Maryland.

"The Handgun Roster Board was sold as this really great idea," he said Friday. "I looked at it pretty recently and they were having problems getting folks on the panel and actually doing their jobs." He said state gun crime statistics led him to suspect these programs weren't working and might be a waste of state resources.

Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's campaign has run with the issue, calling Ehrlich an "ultra-conservative" who would try to undo Maryland's landmark gun-control laws - some of the strictest in the nation.

But in an interview yesterday, Ehrlich said Townsend was stretching his comments to her purpose. "I never advocated getting rid of the Roster Board, did I? She's claiming I said it," he said.

Instead, Ehrlich said he would evaluate any problems and try to fix them.

Yesterday, Marylanders Against Handgun Abuse denounced Ehrlich's comments at a news conference, as did Democrats in Rockville. Today, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence plans to hold a news conference in Silver Spring.

The 11-member Handgun Roster Board, considered a major component of the state's gun policy, is part of a 1988 law that sought to ban cheaply made, easily concealed handguns known as Saturday night specials. Such guns were often used in street crimes.

Advocates say the law has worked, pointing to a Johns Hopkins University study that found it saved about 40 lives a year. Even if Ehrlich keeps the board in place, they worry he would appoint pro-gun members.

But Sanford Abrams of the Maryland Licensed Firearms Dealers Association Inc. says the board has outlived its usefulness, since all the companies that once made "garbage guns" like Saturday night specials have closed.

The result, he says, is that criminals steal or illegally buy higher-caliber firearms, which are more deadly. "The effect is that people who now get shot, die," he said.

Since it began its work in 1990, the board has approved about 1,500 guns for sale, and banned 34 (not including assault weapons forbidden in Maryland), said a state police spokesman. The panel was formed after a bitter fight in November 1988, when opponents of the newly signed law - which then-Delegate Ehrlich voted against - forced the issue to referendum. Even then, he and Townsend were on opposite sides of the debate.

Pro-gun advocates spent $6.6 million on the referendum campaign - $6.1 million of which came from the NRA. The other side spent about $752,000 - and won. It marked the first time such an NRA-backed referendum had failed nationally.

But five months before the referendum, the bank account of the anti-gun forces was nearly empty. Vincent DeMarco, then-executive director of Marylanders Against Handgun Abuse, sought help from Townsend, then working at the Department of Education.

She wrote a fund-raising letter that began with the scene of her father winning the California presidential primary in 1968: "But that night, as we celebrated the victory, a Middle-Eastern fanatic lifted a Saturday Night Special and shot my father dead."

"It was very moving for me," Townsend said yesterday. "It was the first time I'd ever really talked about how my father had died. I'd never said anything, written anything. It was a very sort of big leap for me, in a sense."
Copyright c 2002, The Baltimore Sun
http://www.sunspot.net/news/custom/election/bal-md.guns18sep18(0,7543815).story?coll=bal-local-headlines


"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878

Josey1

Morella Plays Down Party Ties to Ehrlich
GOP Nominee's Views Seen as a Hindrance

Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D) in new television ad in her race for governeor takes aim at the education votes of her GOP opponent, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (Courtesy Kathleen Kennedy Townsend)


By Jo Becker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 18, 2002; Page B01


U.S. Rep. Constance A. Morella is taking steps to distance herself from fellow Maryland Republican Rep. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., signaling concern that too close an alliance with the GOP gubernatorial nominee could hurt the embattled eight-term incumbent in her liberal district.

Morella said she was surprised to find herself featured in a recent television advertising campaign aimed at voters in Washington's Maryland suburbs that portrays Ehrlich as a moderate who shares Morella's abortion-rights views.

Ehrlich has been targeted for defeat by the National Abortion Rights Action League, which has endorsed Morella and recently complained to her campaign about the ad, according to campaign manager Tony Caligiuri.

"We did not know that Bob was doing that," Morella said. "I was rather surprised that he put me in there in that context."

Ehrlich campaign spokesman Paul Schurick said Morella's campaign okayed the ad before it aired. Caligiuri said he listened to the ad over the telephone the night before it ran. "I didn't see it," he said. "My okay was, 'Okay, I'm acknowledging that you're showing us this.' "

Morella also played down her earlier appearances with Ehrlich. "I did two things with him," she said. "I was with him at his announcement. I walked with him through some of the streets of Bethesda."

Morella has made a career out of winning over independents and Democrats in her heavily Democratic district by eschewing party labels and touting a record that makes her one of the most liberal Republicans in the House. But this year, she is viewed as one of her party's most vulnerable incumbents as she runs in a new district encompassing much of Montgomery County and a sliver of Prince George's County. She faces tough competition from Democratic nominee Christopher Van Hollen Jr., a state senator who hopes to tie Morella to the more conservative wing of her party.

Endorsements from liberal-leaning groups such as NARAL and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence play a key role in Morella's strategy, reinforcing the message that hers is an independent voice. And she has already begun highlighting that support in campaign literature.

With the Republicans in a fight to keep their slim, six-vote majority in the House, those groups are under pressure to support Democrats this year, and Morella can ill afford to alienate them.

Michael D. Barnes is the president of the Brady Campaign, which has endorsed Morella but has targeted Ehrlich for defeat. Barnes said that going to bat for Ehrlich, who last week suggested revisiting some of Maryland's gun-control laws, could pose problems for Morella "both in terms of endorsements from organizations opposed to Mr. Ehrlich and in just in terms of voters."

From Ehrlich's perspective, the benefits of an alliance with Morella are clear. In his race against Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D) to become Maryland's next governor, Montgomery County is a key battleground. The state's largest jurisdiction produced one-sixth of the votes cast in the 1998 governor's race, and Morella remains one of the county's best known and most popular politicians. She can help Ehrlich in his attempts to portray himself as a social moderate, a crucial task in a state that hasn't elected a Republican governor in 36 years. "Connie Morella is an expert at attracting crossover Democrats and independents, and we hope to learn a great deal from that experience," Schurick said. "She and Bob spent a great deal of time at each other's side in Montgomery County. We were distributing her literature on the ground last week."

Ehrlich's more conservative credentials can help motivate a Republican base that may not be inspired by some of Morella's liberal stances, something that Morella will need if she is to have a chance of winning. Schurick said he hopes that the two will appear together often in the coming weeks.

But with NARAL President Kate Michelman scheduled to appear on Townsend's behalf today and gun-control advocates holding a protest to condemn Ehrlich, Morella's campaign said more joint appearances do not appear to be in the offing. "I don't know that there's any on the schedule," Caligiuri said.

Caligiuri said Morella did not request that the television ad be pulled because "we were assured it was coming down anyway." At the same time, Caligiuri said he saw nothing inaccurate in the ad's portrayal of Ehrlich as supporting abortion rights. Ehrlich's campaign has pointed out that he voted with Planned Parenthood of Maryland 63 percent to 73 percent of the time over the past three years.

c 2002 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31374-2002Sep17.html



"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878