Thanks to you WE were able to stop the proposed Anti Civil Rights legislation from becoming law. Great job everyone, with your help GOAL will continue to be vigilant at the State House.

Lets also remember who the legislators were on both sides of this fight come November.


CORI Bill Update
May 27, 2010

Over the past few days GOAL members have received several requests for action by the GOAL staff due to the busy pace of legislation at the State House. We are very pleased to tell our members that your response in the way of phone calls and emails to your legislators has been very successful.

Over the course of two days GOAL alerted our members to four action items.

1. The Senate budget contained an amendment (#121) that would have adopted language allowing the courts to hold citizens without bail for simple unlicensed possession of certain types of firearms.
2. During the House debate on H.4703, the "CORI Bill" (Criminal Offender Record Information) two amendments were filed:
a. Amendment # 29 would have changed the laws regarding the private sales and transfers of guns to be done though a licensed dealer.
b. Amendment #30 would have provided a 10 year prison sentence for the attempt of or commission of a misdemeanor while carrying a firearm while committing or threatening physical harm of another. (This language is very loose and could have led to serious criminal issues for minor offenses.)
3. During the House debate on H.4703, the "CORI Bill" section 113 of the bill would have allowed the courts to hold citizens without bail for simple unlicensed possession of certain types of firearms. This language would have been in violation of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruling Commonwealth vs. Young. This decision ruled that simple unlicensed possession is a "passive and victimless crime".

GOAL offered an amendment to this section through Rep. George Peterson to correct the language putting it in line with the SJC ruling. Our amendment would have tightened up what the courts could consider and provided a tougher tool for prosecutors.

Working together we were successful in defeating the Senate budget amendment (#121) and the two anti-civil rights amendments (#29 & #30) to H.4703.

The biggest challenge came with attempting to fix section 113 of H.4703. The District Attorney from Bristol County was trying to put a lot of pressure on House members to give the courts the ability to hold citizens for simple unlicensed possession in spite of the SJC ruling.

Because of your quick response to the action alerts, your phone calls and emails told legislators you were paying attention and wanted this done right. In the end we did not get our original amendment, but we were able to substantially change the section to protect citizens from wrongful detention without bail for simple possession. The language that we were successful in attaining can be found below.

Congratulations to all of our members who reacted so quickly to GOAL's action alerts this week. Many times during this legislative push our staff was told by legislators that they had received communications on these matters. We would also urge our members to send a note of thanks to Rep. George Peterson for his tremendous efforts on this bill.

Note: The last sentence dealing with feeding devices may be a little confusing to some. It was put there due to an argument from GOAL during the senate debates on this in February. At that time we successfully argued that someone driving through the Commonwealth with a high cap magazine in their vehicle, and nothing else, should never be held as a dangerous person. In this new House language it wasn't necessary to add because of the changes we were able to attain, but it also does no harm. All it means is that if you are a felon, person on bail, or on probation and you are arrested for unlawful possession of a high cap magazine, you must also have possession of the gun to be held under this law.

H.4703 amending Section 58A of Chapter 276:

The commonwealth may move, based on dangerousness, for an order of pretrial detention or release on conditions for any convicted felon, person on bail, person on probation who is arrested and charged with violation of paragraph (a), (c) or (m) of section 10 f chapter 269 or arrested and charged with a violation of section 10G of said chapter 269; provided, however, that the commonwealth may not move for an order of detention under this section based on possession of a large capacity feeding device without simultaneous possession of large capacity weapon.

GOAL would once again like to thank everyone for bearing with us during this busy time. Thanks to everyone for taking action, and a very big thanks to Rep George Peterson, who remains a great advocate for the Second Amendment and Civil Rights.