Massachusetts Citizen Action:  The first state to allow same-sex marriage is Massachusetts, which is bound by a 1913 law that prevents out-of-state gay and lesbian couples from getting married there. The law prevents the state of Massachusetts from recognizing marriages that are not legal in the state where the couple lives. It was originally enacted to prevent interracial couples from violating their own states' ban by traveling to Massachusetts; however, it was a rarely used law until it began to be used to prevent same-sex couples from circumventing their own states' laws and amendments protecting man-woman marriage. Massachusetts lawmakers are expected to vote next week to repeal the 1913 law. If the Massachusetts lawmakers do so, it would put Massachusetts on par with California.

Massachusetts Citizen Action:  Join in NRA and GOAL's "Boston Tea Party 2008!"  In 1998, former Massachusetts Governor Paul Cellucci (R) signed a law into effect that continues to violate our Second Amendment rights.   Wednesday, July 23 will mark the ten-year anniversary of the signing of the Gun Control Act of 1998.  Chapter 180 of the Acts was signed with the ill-conceived notion that crime and violence would be eradicated from the streets.  Not only has this notion proven to be incorrect by the increase in criminal activity, but it's also been in direct violation of our Second Amendment rights.  As a result, July 23, 2008 will be known as the "Boston Tea Party 2008" and the National Rifle Association, in conjunction with the Gun Owners Action League (GOAL), are encouraging members to send a symbolic message to our elected officials that we want them to repeal Chapter 180.  We are asking members to send this note, as well as a tea bag, to your elected officials to let them know, just as our forefathers did, that unfair treatment against lawful gun owners will not be tolerated.  To find contact information for your State Legislators, please click here. 

Background Column:  (Editor's Note: EarsToHear.net has never posted an entire and lengthy column in this space, but an exception was made for content and archive purposes.)

Mass Murder: How Reducing The Ranks of Gun Owners Increases Crime By Marshall Lewin - Just outside of Fenway Park, millions of Massachusetts Turnpike motorists pass a billboard that Stop Handgun Violence, a Boston gun-ban group, brags is “America’s largest.” That billboard recently claimed that in Massachusetts, “you’re more likely to live”—because of the state’s antigun laws. But the truth is just the opposite: Thanks to the Bay State’s anti-gun laws, you’re more likely to die in Massachusetts—violently—than anywhere else in New England.

For the past 20 years, in dozens of states, we’ve seen how Right-to-Carry has cut crime and saved lives. As one state after another has expanded opportunities for law-abiding citizens to keep and carry guns, violent crime has retreated like cockroaches fleeing from a kitchen light. Today, the refrain of “more guns means less crime” has proven so reliably, consistently true that few even bother to argue otherwise anymore. But what about the reverse? If more guns equal less crime, do fewer guns, and fewer gun owners, equal more crime? We’ve seen that scenario happen in England, South Africa and Australia. Fortunately, here in the United States, we’ve had few places test the idea. Now, however, 10 years’ worth of hard data and harder lessons from Massachusetts prove the principle cuts both ways: Right-to-Carry saves lives, but gun bans can kill.

“Decade of Disaster”

In 1998, the Massachusetts House and Senate passed, and Gov. Paul Cellucci signed into law, Chapter 180 of the Acts of 1998—otherwise known as the Gun Control Act of 1998. It was sold to the public as merely an “assault weapons” ban, but it was extraordinarily complicated, affecting 80 sections of law and effectively re-writing virtually every gun law for the commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Gun Owners Action League (GOAL), the NRA state association for Massachusetts, has been tracking the effects of this radical anti-gun monstrosity since it was passed 10 years ago. The conclusion: The Massachusetts Gun Control Act of 1998—a set of gun laws goal call the “worst in the nation”—has wrought a “decade of disaster” for the citizens of the Bay State. Why? Because not only did the new law cost a fortune in taxpayer dollars ...

... and not only did it fail to reduce crime as promised ... ... and not only did it radically reduce the number of lawful gun owners in the state ... ... it also reversed an eight-year trend of falling murder rates.

So much for “gun control.” Ten years of trial and error prove it doesn’t work. Consider the following facts: As GOAL Executive Director Jim Wallace points out, a Massachusetts legislative committee’s report on firearm licenses show that, prior to the 1998 law there were approximately 1.5 million licensed gun owners in the state. Since then, the number of licensed gun owners has been reduced to roughly 240,000—a devastating decline of some 84 percent!

Gun-Grabbers’ Dream Come True

How did the Massachusetts gungrabbers manage to cut the number of licensed gun owners by 1.26 million? Easy: Pass a law that turns one license into two, and two licenses into three. Turn a lifetime license into a four-year license. Hike the price from $5-for-life, to $25-every-four-years, to $100-until- Boston-needs-money-again. Require different licenses for different guns, a license for ammunition, a license for pepper spray, even a license to own a single #209 primer. Then make possession of that primer without a license a crime worthy of two years in jail. The 1998 law also lengthened the list of disqualifying offenses that would bar you from owning a firearm and it applied that proscription to any peccadillo in your past—retroactively to the day you were born. As a result, many gun owners had their supposed “lifetime licenses” pulled for life for minor offenses that were decades old. “I met a man in his 70s who had owned guns all his life,”GOAL’s Wallace said. “But suddenly he was disqualified from owning any gun—all because of a 1947 bar fight.” Moreover, the 1998 law’s prohibitions were just the latest layer of razor wire that Massachusetts wrapped around gun-owner rights. Massachusetts also gives the local police chief or sheriff complete authority to restrict a license, cook up constraints on a license, or deny a license altogether —for any reason or no reason at all. It might be because of a rumor, or because the sheriff never particularly liked an applicant, or because the chief simply doesn’t like guns. In the end, the net effect of all these bans, restrictions, licensing schemes, rules and fees, and the arbitrary ways in which they were applied, has been that the number of licensed gun owners in Massachusetts has fallen through the floor. They say you should be careful of what you wish for and the Massachusetts gun-ban lobby is surely reconsidering the wisdom of its anti-gun jihad. By radically reducing the ranks of lawful gun owners in Massachusetts, they established a set of circumstances that could prove whether those laws really work. And the truth is, they don’t. If the gun-ban lobby’s “logic” held any water, reducing the number of guns and gun owners in the state should have reduced the number of gun-related crimes and injuries as well. Instead, just the opposite occurred.

As Gun Owners Surrender, Murder Rates Rise In the eight years before passage of the Gun Control Act of 1998, Massachusetts’ murder rate decreased by 55 percent. But as soon as Massachusetts passed its “worst in the nation” antigun laws, the state’s murder rate began to rise, even as the U.S. murder rate was falling. Between 1997, the last year before Massachusetts’ new gun laws were passed, and 2006, the state’s murder rate rose 49 percent, while the U.S. rate dropped 16 percent. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, in 2006 Massachusetts’ per-capita murder rate was: • 192 percent higher than New Hampshire, • 66 percent higher than Maine, • 50 percent higher than Vermont, • 10 percent higher than Rhode Island, and • just 6 percent lower than Connecticut.

And, according to the state’s Injury Surveillance Program: • Between 1999 and 2006, “assault-related emergency room visits” soared by 331 percent • Between 2001 and 2006, “assault outpatient observations” skyrocketed by 590 percent

In March 2008, The Congressional Quarterly website, www.cqpress.com, released its Safest State Awards. In this annual national ranking, now in its 15th year, each state’s position is based on its per-capita rates of murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft. In 2008, New Hampshire was rated as the safest state in the nation, Maine was rated as the second-safest state, Vermont ranked fourth, Connecticut ranked 11th and Rhode Island ranked 12th. Massachusetts ranked as the 22nd-safest in the nation. There’s no disputing that, despite having some of the most restrictive anti-gun laws in the country, Massachusetts is by far the most violent state in New England.

Anti-Gun Lies Corrode the Quality and Sanctity of Life Yet unbelievably, the anti-gun lobby gives Massachusetts higher marks than any other state in New England! In its most recent “State Scorecard Rankings,” the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence ranked Massachusetts tied for third place (with Connecticut) in the nation. Rhode Island was in seventh place, Maine was tied for 21st place, New Hampshire was tied for 23rd and Vermont pulled up the rear for 29th place.

For New England at least, the antigun lobby’s rankings of the states is almost an exact-opposite, top-to-bottom reversal of the FBI’s rankings. Some states with high crime get high grades from the anti-gun lobby, and some states with low crime get low grades. A skeptic might be tempted to ask, did they rank Massachusetts at the top because it’s the most violent state in New England and, thus, the most hospitable market for them to sell their gun-ban gimmicks? Or did they give it high marks because their gun bans made it the roughest state in New England?

Too bad they refuse to accept the obvious consequence that goes hand-inhand with their absurd grading scheme: The reason all these high-grading states are violent is because anti-gun laws allowed them to become more violent by disarming good people! Considering that Massachusetts is the home of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, you might expect that after such a disastrous decade of gun-ban misadventures, the brain trusts of Boston might consider other ideas. You might expect them to look across their northern border to Vermont, where citizens carry firearms concealed or openly without permits or licenses—and where crime rates are a tiny fraction of those in Massachusetts. But they don’t. Instead, like addicts who refuse to admit they’re hooked, they pathologically cling to what they know is a lie, only because they wish it were true—or because they’re afraid of what revealing the lie might cost. “A lot of these guys in the legislature, you talk to them privately and they say, ‘I agree with you,’” said goal’s Wallace. “Yet in the next breath they say, ‘I’d vote with you, but I can’t take the heat from the media. The Boston Globe would be all over me in the next election.’” Nonetheless, Wallace says, gun owners in Massachusetts have been very vocal with their elected representatives, and have voted out of office most of the more hard-core antigun politicians.

As a result, he said, attitudes in the statehouse seem to be changing and the tide is slowly beginning to turn, thanks in large part to goal’s efforts to publicize the tragic failure of the state’s anti-gun laws. “There is no debate over gun control,” Wallace said. “The debate’s over. It didn’t work. You can hide from it all you want, but the facts are the facts and you can’t change them. So what’s next?” For the victimized but now vindicated gun owners of the Bay State, that question holds a glint of hope—the promise and potential for a freer, safer tomorrow for Massachusetts.

Brady Campaign: Sensible Gun Laws?, by Howard Nemerov - What's sensible about higher violent crime rates?