The Phone Call I've Always Feared

Today just as I was getting ready to call it a day for work, I received a phone call - a call I've always feared receiving. "Hey, we saw someone trying to break into the house and they ran off in the direction of your house. I'm not sure if you're home or not, but get a hold of your wife and have her lock the doors."

My heart sunk.

Fortunately I was working from home today, so my wife was only a few steps away from my home office. But the first thing that came to my mind was "Oh my God, what if I wasn't here and she was home alone? What if they tried to break in and she was the only person here?"

My house is at the entrance of a dead-end lane. From the moment I received that call from my neighbor, I timed the response time of our local police department. It took 25 minutes.

I'm not writing anything negative against our local law enforcement for this response time. We live in the middle of the country. This call didn't require an urgent response because the person did run off, and no lives were in immediate danger. I feel that's an acceptable response time in this case. However, even if the response was half that time - 12 minutes - that's still an eternity, and if someone had broken into the house and was attacking my wife, there's no way that law enforcement will arrive in time to stop it.

This is why we have firearms in the home - readily accessible in case of an emergency.

Right now there are a lot of proposed laws in the Maryland legislature further restricting firearm ownership. The harsh reality of these proposed laws is that none of them will make us any safer. In fact, several of the proposed laws will actually reduce my wife's safety.

HB1261 redefines "assault weapons" to include a much larger number of rifles, prohibiting their purchase after October 1, 2020, as well as requiring registration of current "legally owned" long guns which are redefined as assault weapons. How does this make my wife less safe? The new definition is basically any semi-automatic magazine fed rifle with a single feature, such as pistol grip. Weapons with pistol grips are much easier to handle, and by restricting the types of firearms my wife can purchase in the future, the Maryland legislature is reducing her chances of survival if someone ever breaks in with the intent to do her harm. On top of it all, we have to pay a minimum $290 registration fee for firearms we already own, and can never transfer the firearms. We're now being taxed on property we purchased years ago, all in the name of "public safety".

HB0636 and SB0646 make things even more difficult for my wife by implementing intentionally vague requirements prohibiting someone from storing a firearm where an unsupervised minor could access it. The proposed law as written could theoretically result in myself and my wife being charged with a misdemeanor just for having our firearms readily accessible, even if we don't have children in the home, since a family member could bring their children to visit.

To add to the insanity, the Maryland legislature is now trying to solve problems that don't even exist.

HB0910 and SB0958 prohibit private manufacture of firearms, which is contrary to the ATF ruling that a Federal Firearms License is not required for private manufacture of firearms for personal use. Let's be honest, how many homemade firearms have you heard of being used in a crime in the news?

Then there's HB1257 which increases the cost of doing business for gun shops. This will only result in higher prices at gun stores, meaning less affordable firearms.  SB0422 will have a similar effect in that it will increase the yearly cost of possessing a conceal carry permit, taking away firearms from law abiding citizens while doing nothing to disarm the criminals carrying illegally.

Enough is enough. Our legislature needs to start focusing on real issues, instead of trying to make life more difficult for law abiding firearm owners who simply want to be able to defend themselves.

Criminals don't care about laws. They carry whatever firearm they want anyway. Maybe it's time Maryland started trusting its own residents, instead of trying to control them.

This is an opinion piece by Ken Buckler, Editor.

Reporters Need Universal Background Checks, Limits on Articles per Year

With the advent of blogging, podcasts, and social media, anyone can claim to be a journalist these days. I believe that while California's new law restricting freelance journalists to 35 stories per year is a step in the right direction, we must do more to regulate journalists, including licensing and mandatory background checks.

Firstly, we need to begin requiring universal background checks and licensing for journalists. Currently only journalists directly employed by a major news organization are subject to background checks as part of their employment. We must close the "freelancer" and "self-publishing" loophole by requiring that all journalists participate in a Federal background check program prior to publishing each and every article they write. The journalists should also be licensed as part of this program, requiring that they pay a yearly fee of at least $150 to their state government to properly register their status as a journalist. Please note that this license is only a license to practice journalism in their home state, and other states may or may not accept this license. Some states, such as Maryland, may not accept out-of-state licenses at all.

California is too generous with 35 articles per year. We must urge for national legislation restricting ALL journalists to be restricted to one article per month, unless they are willing to pay an extra $500 per year licensing fee and submit to additional background checks to be considered a professional journalist, at which point they will be allowed to write 35 articles per year, in line with the California law.

Journalists should also be restricted in what type of equipment they're allowed to use to write their articles. They should be restricted to electric or manual typewriters, as long as those typewriters cannot exceed 35 words per minute. Production of future devices which can exceed 35 wpm will be prohibited, and a $200 federal tax stamp will be required for any existing devices when they change ownership.

Steps also need to be taken to prevent "assault journalism", in which a journalist uses not only written words, but photos, videos, or sound. "Assault journalism" should be banned outright, and any journalist found using such techniques be permanently prohibited from ever writing an article again.

Finally, journalists can be extremely dangerous, possibly writing articles which may encourage others to perform acts which are not in society's best interests. As such, journalists should be subject to laws in which a doctor, family member, or neighbor can report to police that the journalist may be writing anti-societal articles. Police can then perform a no-knock raid of the journalist's home and confiscate any and all devices used to write articles. It is possible that the journalist may resist, at which point police are fully authorized to kill the journalist.

If you're a journalist absolutely horrified by this opinion article, then do take a breath, as it is satire. These restrictions are almost identical to the ones being called for against firearm owners across the country. Perhaps now you understand how we feel.

This is an editorial by Ken Buckler, editor of WashCo Chronicle.

The Harsh Reality of Beto's Gun Ban Impending Death Toll

Last night during the Democrat Presidential debates, Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas) stated that he will ban AR-15 and AK47s, requiring that these firearms be sold back to the government. With over 15 million AR-15s in the United States, that's going to be a serious problem.

First, let's do the math on this. Typically an AR-15 cost anywhere between $500 to $1,000. After accessories, this could be well over $2,000 or beyond. If someone spent $1,000 on a firearm, they are not going to willingly sell it back to the government for less than $500, even under threat of imprisonment.  So what would be the minimum cost of such a mandatory buyback program?

Completely disregarding any associated marketing costs, overtime costs, processing costs, or any other cost - the cost for the Federal government to purchase every single AR-15 in the United States is $7.5 billion.

Of course, that's assuming Americans comply. New Zealand's banning of semi-automatic rifles has resulted in only a small fraction of the privately owned rifles being turned in.

And of course, it's easy for O'Rourke to campaign for taking these rifles from the law abiding owners because he doesn't have to be the one to actually take the rifle.

Instead, it would be law enforcement officers putting their lives on the line, conducting no-knock raids to confiscate rifles from owners who refuse to give them up. The end result? People are going to die. Either the firearm owners themselves, or law enforcement officers who have been instructed to confiscate the weapons - people who otherwise would be law abiding citizens will become felons because of something they lawfully acquired. If only 10% of AR-15 owners resist confiscation, that's approximately 750,000 to 1.5 million people who may lose their lives. Is confiscating firearms from otherwise law-abiding citizens truly worth that potential death toll?

There's an excellent editorial in the Washington Post titled "Don't support laws you are not willing to kill to enforce". Make no mistake, when Beto O'Rourke says that he's "gonna take your AR-15", he's willing to have you and every other gun owner in the country killed in the process.

Ken is the editor of WashCo Chronicle.

Letter Regarding OPM Breach and Maryland Conceal Carry Permits

The following letter was sent to Governor Hogan and Assistant Attorney General Mark Bowen. The OPM breach presents a clear threat to the safety of Maryland residents who are employees, contractors, or family members thereof of the Federal Government. Any response will be posted.

Governor Hogan and Assistant Attorney General Mark Bowen, 

As I am sure you have heard by now, 21 million individuals, including Federal employees, contractors, and their significant others, have had their personal information stolen, most likely by a foreign government.
A large number of affected individuals reside in Maryland.
One of the fears shared by affected individuals is that a foreign government may attempt to use the compromised information to blackmail workers into becoming spies, with the potential to threaten them as well as their families.  See http://www.wired.com/2015/07/senator-sasse-washington-still-isnt-taking-opm-breach-seriously/
Given this information, will Maryland do the right thing and grant conceal carry permits to affected individuals and their families, in order to protect them from this new threat? 

Thank you,
Ken Buckler
Editor, WashCo Chronicle
www.washcochronicle.com

Ken Buckler is the editor of the WashCo Chronicle.