Let's face it. Kennedy has a strangle hold on New England. Until that idiot retires or dies, New England will always be the BLUE states.
Posted on 03/04/2005 4:53:19 AM PST by SheLion
BANGOR - A gun and ammunition tax that would create a fund to increase security at the state's courthouses has been proposed by several members of the Legislature's Judiciary Committee. The 7 percent tax would be in addition to the 5 percent state sales tax that consumers already pay when they buy guns and ammunition from licensed dealers in the state.
George Smith, executive director of the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine, said on Monday that while the organization supports improved security at courthouses, it would oppose the bill.
"Making law abiding citizens who are gun owners pay the entire cost of something that serves all the people is the wrong approach," he said. "I can't see any justification in this particular funding source. Why not knives and other items?"
The bill, LD 1012, which was printed late last week, has been referred to the Taxation Committee. A date for a public hearing has not been set.
The bill's sponsor, Rep. Deborah L. Pelletier-Simpson, D-Auburn, said on Monday that she is very concerned about court safety and believes the bill will help focus attention on the need for full-time screening in the state's busiest courthouses.
"We need to do something before we have a person shot in our courts," she said. "We are not protecting our judges or our citizens who go there."
Pelletier-Simpson said that she chose to tax firearms rather than other potential weapons such as knives, because as a victim of domestic violence she believes guns are deadlier.
"I am more concerned about court security than creating a new tax," she said on Monday. "If people want to come up with another way to pay for it, I'm open to other ideas, but we have to make our courts safe."
The bill, if passed, would create the Courthouse Security Fund that would be used to pay security officers to operate screening equipment similar to that used at airports and in federal buildings.
Exactly how much money a gun and ammunition tax would raise has not been determined, but earlier this year, Ted Glessner, state court administrator, said that it would cost $3 million to use the equipment properly year round.
Glessner also has said that about 85 more court security officers are needed to operate the X-ray machines and metal detectors.
The judiciary would not take a stand on the bill, he said on Monday.
For almost a year, the 28 metal detectors and 10 X-ray machines have sat idle in courthouses around the state because there has been no money to pay security officers to operate them. The equipment was purchased in 2003 with $540,000 in bond issue money.
Legislators last year approved $100,000 for random screenings in locations around the state that now are under way.
In her State of the Judiciary Address to the Legislature last month, Leigh I. Saufley, chief justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, however, again expressed concern about "the inability of the judicial branch to make our courthouses safe."
Entry screening is conducted an average of 10 days each year for each of the state's 41 courthouses, she said.
The chief justice also told the Legislature that during that limited time screeners had confiscated more than 1,400 knives or related weapons and five firearms.
"Imagine what has come through those doors during the more than 200 days when entry screening was not in place," she said last month.
Hey! They are coming on here in DROVES to shop! Every other license plate you see up here is a Canadian. Yet Mainer's are going by bus loads to Canada for cheaper prescription drugs. Go figure.
The non-smokers poo-poo'd about us and how we complain about the treatment WE are getting. Well, now CSM, it's starting to hit other's door steps. Let's see how THEY like it!
2.) I hadn't realized Maine had such an epidemic of violence at its court houses. They don't? Never mind...
metesky, you know as well as I that our lawmakers want to hang onto their pet programs since the FEDS have cut a lot of spending. This is just another back-door attempt by Augusta to keep their mother load of money coming in. They can't kid me!
Amen, brother. Turn left until you see the beach and smell the barbecue.
But seriously, why try to stick this tax on lawful gun owners? LAWFUL gun owners don't shoot up courthouses. CRIMINALS shoot up courthouses, and even that doesn't happen very often. Who is this tax going to protect? Lawyers and judges. Tax the lawyers then! They can afford it for their personal security.
Hey, I have a great idea! Let's start a whole new tax branch of the Treasury and call it something like the 'Bureau of Firearms and Explosives'. Then just let those nice people run things. They'll know what to do.
I guess hubby beaned her a little too hard with that set of encyclopedias. Must have been volume 7, "G".
Let's face it. Kennedy has a strangle hold on New England. Until that idiot retires or dies, New England will always be the BLUE states.
How about a beer tax to cover the entire cost of the Highway Patrol, rehab centers, etc.
Seriously, I believe that we all need to congregate at the state house and protest so loud the whole lot of them walk out the door and resign. I thought that was a beautiful thing!
That will be next, you watch. There is already talk about the Governor bringing back the state liquor stores. Guess that idea of getting rid of them didn't work out so good, eh? We can thank Guv King for THAT one!
Well, no. That idiot sells our revenue generators to make up shortfalls in today's budget. What a moron! Think about it for a minute, sell off the few things that actually make money to make up for a budget shortfall today. And it gone, all gone. It's spent and we are out of business. How idiotic is that?!
Ah yes, another "victim." Let's make her personal experience the basis for public policy, it's only fair.
I don't suppose the idea that one of those deadly guns might make it possible for her to defend herself would ever enter her "mind."
As in a Petri dish innoculated with a fast-growing baterium, the decay of culture first starts at the point of innoculation. Rest assured that this same decay is also setting in places like Texas and New Mexico. Texas has its share of ugly, bitter and mouthy old women. I offer Molly Ivens as an example. And New Mexico can't seem to escape it's desire to have a Democratic governor. The point here is that the cultural decay has not had as long to proceed in the South as it has on the east coast. As the South ages we Southerners are also getting our share of the liberal rainbow airheads. I believe it was Karl Marx who indicated that civilized governments evolve from democracies to communism. I may not disagree with his observation but would add that this evolution is less an evolution which selects for beneficial characteristics, than a natural decay of culture and society.
Muleteam1
Jake
Jake
Unfortunately, the leaders who now survive in politics are those who can safely jump in front of the stampeding herd and not those who can turn it.
Muleteam1
Soooooooooo..........how many people have been killed in the court house? I think it is telling that there are screams of angst about making a place safe that is already safe. I have not seen headlines about wholesale carnage in Maine courtrooms.
Jake
Oh Jake! Thank you! The more eyes that see this, the better off we will be. We have to get the word out about what our lame lawmakers are doing to their constituents in this state. And isn't it funny how they pick and choose which group gets hit with a tax next? It's mind boggling.
They must think they have a bunch of sheeple out here and we just bow and say "Yes Master. Do as thy will." Well, they are California dreaming if they think like that. Because we sure aren't and WILL not become sheeple for the MASTERS in the Maine State House!
Uhhh.... none.
But, let's see, how many men in the Maine Child Support system committed suicide last year? Somewhere between two dozen and fifty or so, I can safely estimate.
So, we are spending 3 million a year preventing NO deaths - merely making the loony judges and fems who own the courts feel all warm and fuzzy and important - while and spending $0 to help men who are dying every month after being crushed by the state bureaucracy?
I think that tells you what value the state puts on certain of it's own citizens.
Anyway, I'd guess that Rep. Simpson, being a "victim of domestic violence" and all, probably considers it a success when one of those bad divorced men blows their own brains out.
As long as they do it quietly at home, it's no trouble to her and her radical feminist pals.
She has one big screw loose! At least the state house got their elevator music and heated steps! heh!
Too bad that the $175,000 art work that Gov King wanted to purchase for the state house fell through, isn't it? I think it was all of US that put a big stop to THAT waste of money.
What part of "...Shall not be Abridged" do they not understand?
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