Are they considering letting victims shoot back? Oh, hell no. That would be horrible! Letting the rabble arm themselves in their own defense? Perish the thought!
No, instead they are grasping at that tiredest of legislative straws, the Mandatory Minimum Sentence.
"Yet this month in Baltimore, the city council voted 8-7 in favor of establishing a new mandatory minimum penalty for individuals caught carrying an illegal gun. The proposed legislation originally would have imposed a one-year jail sentence on first-time offenders caught carrying a gun within 100 yards of places like churches, schools, and parks. After public protest, the bill was weakened to add just a $1,000 fine to existing state law, which already imposes a one-year minimum sentence on second-time offenders. The legislation (in both its original and final form) was backed by the city’s police commissioner, Kevin Davis, along with Mayor Catherine Pugh and Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby—who all also advocated unsuccessfully over the last two years for new statewide mandatory minimums."The problem with mandatory minimums is that they remove judgment from judgments. Further, this adds a mandatory...no mens rea required...penalty to an activity that's legal barely more than a half-dozen Interstate exits away.
Those of us who live where the state boundaries are farther apart have less of a worry about this, but get out toward the East Coast and up to the Potomac and points north, and you can go from Constitutional Carry to a ban on even having spent brass without a license in one overshot exit ramp.
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