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Gun-Hating Henry Marsh stood in the way of Pro-Gun legislation

Repeater

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Marsh stood in way of pro-gun legislation

Repeal the one-gun-a-month statute. Allow concealed guns in bars and in cars. Expand the death penalty to accomplices in capital murders. Prohibit public access to records of holders of concealed-handgun permits. Prohibit localities from requiring fingerprints to apply for concealed handguns. Change the restrictions on hunting near subdivisions.

The only obstacle was the Democrat-dominated 15-member Senate Courts of Justice Committee and its chairman -- a soft-spoken, stubborn, septuagenarian senator and noted civil-rights lawyer from Richmond, Sen. Henry L. Marsh III.

Marsh turned out to be carrying a big stick.

As the flow of House gun bills became a wave, Marsh, a former Richmond City Council member and Richmond mayor who has served the past 18 years in the Senate, created a special subcommittee to hear them.

He stacked the subcommittee with himself, one centrist Republican and three Democrats from urban areas with long-standing opposition to gun-rights expansion. The move drew fire from the pro-gun lobby and also Republican lawmakers, some of whom stomped out of committee hearings.

Marsh has spent much of his public life opposing the expansion of gun rights.

In 1997, his 59-year-old brother, Richmond lawyer and substitute Judge Harold M. Marsh Sr., was fatally shot while stopped at a South Richmond traffic light.

The senator said the tragedy reaffirmed his stance against gun violence and cemented his opposition to the death penalty -- two positions he has advocated consistently on the Senate Courts of Justice Committee.

This year, few of the significant House gun bills advanced to the full committee. The exceptions were bills allowing holders of concealed-weapons permits to bring their guns into bars, as well as a bill allowing people without the permits to lock their guns in a container or glove compartment of their vehicles.

Both bills, however, had been companions to Senate legislation that had been approved by the full committee earlier in the session and likely will receive Gov. Bob McDonnell's signature.

Marsh said in an interview that it was clear this year that the gun advocates didn't want to stop there. "They want the whole enchilada," he said. "There has to be some balance."

"The pro-gun forces made an all-out attack," he added. "I think there was a pent-up desire to unleash this effort to establish Virginia as the [most] pro-gun state in the union."

Marsh defended his decision to create the subcommittee and decide its composition. He said it was "not unprecedented and does not trespass the protocol" for considering legislation, noting that the tactic has been used numerous times in the past by committee chairmen of both parties to hear legislation on issues such as mental health and immigration.

"You will find that a majority of House subcommittees include only one minority-party member, and often the ratio is 9 to 2 in favor of majority-party members," he said.

The senator said organizations such as the Virginia State Police and the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission -- which traditionally appeared before the committee to oppose certain gun bills, such as guns in cars and guns in bars -- were conspicuously absent from hearings this time, with a new administration in charge.

"I'm not saying they were muscled, but it was strange to see them go from strongly opposing to having no opinion," he said.

"I've been elected to exercise judgment, and I'm going to do what I think is right," said Marsh, who gives no indication of giving up his chairmanship or his seat, which is up for election in 2011. He said he is having fun and said he looks at his position as "an opportunity to do justice."

"I survived George Allen, and I survived Jim Gilmore," he said referring to former Republican governors. "And I was able to be fairly effective. I might be able to survive Bob McDonnell."
 

peter nap

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Look at the bright side. I think he's 77 or 78. He's bound to go west soon. Then Richmond can elect another idiot.:uhoh:
 

roscoe13

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G3SecurityGroup.com wrote:
He was an anti gun Mayor of Richmond back in the early 80's and has gone down hill ever since. We should celebrate the days he leaves public office.
And we should do everything we can to make sure that's sooner, rather than later...
 

GWRedDragon

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Repeater wrote:
The senator said organizations such as the Virginia State Police and the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission -- which traditionally appeared before the committee to oppose certain gun bills, such as guns in cars and guns in bars -- were conspicuously absent from hearings this time, with a new administration in charge.

"I'm not saying they were muscled, but it was strange to see them go from strongly opposing to having no opinion," he said.

I hadn't heard about this. I think this is great news! The job of the police is to enforce the laws that exist, not to campaign for or against legislation. (Obviously I have no problem with individual officers campaigning, just the agency itself.)

If this really is the Governor's doing, I say good job :cool:
 

zoom6zoom

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So if his brother had died in a car wreck, would he be anti-automobile and trying to make us all pedestrians?

We really need to start grooming and running our own candidates and not just waiting to see what the "party" will offer us.
 

doug23838

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zoom6zoom wrote:
So if his brother had died in a car wreck, would he be anti-automobile and trying to make us all pedestrians?

We really need to start grooming and running our own candidates and not just waiting to see what the "party" will offer us.

+1

We have to start growing them, and replacing them at every level.
 

Dutch Uncle

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Perhaps at Lobby Day next year, we need to double our numbers again and get about 2000 VCDL/OCDO people at the General Assembly building specifically protesting "death Star" committees.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I had the impression that sub-committees typically don't kill legislation, they make recommendations to the full committee. Anyone know for sure?
 

TFred

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Dutch Uncle wrote:
Perhaps at Lobby Day next year, we need to double our numbers again and get about 2000 VCDL/OCDO people at the General Assembly building specifically protesting "death Star" committees.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I had the impression that sub-committees typically don't kill legislation, they make recommendations to the full committee. Anyone know for sure?
That is the very heart of this matter.

House rules permit subcommittees to kill bills. Senate rules do not. The reason for the different rules is a matter of numbers. There are 100 Delegates, but only 40 Senators. If the House could not act on bills at the subcommittee level, they would be in session until May each year.

Saslaw and Marsh created a specific subcommittee with the sole purpose to violate the Senate rules by killing gun bills. They were quite proud of themselves for doing this, and I would even say they bragged about it. To top it all off, by the end of the final session of the "Special" subcommittee, there were as few as 2 of the 5 Senators actually present in the room voting to kill these good bills. The others were "phoning it in", as they could not even be bothered with the trouble to be there in person to perform their dirty deeds.

It flies in the face of every law-abiding Virginian that these people who create the law were allowed to make such a mockery of the process. Pelosi and Reid would be very proud.

TFred
 

Glock27Bill

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The senator said organizations such as the Virginia State Police and the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission -- which traditionally appeared before the committee to oppose certain gun bills, such as guns in cars and guns in bars -- were conspicuously absent from hearings this time, with a new administration in charge. "I'm not saying they were muscled, but it was strange to see them go from strongly opposing to having no opinion," he said.

So are they being strong-armed by McDonnell, or were they strong-armed by Kaine?
 

TFred

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Glock27Bill wrote:
The senator said organizations such as the Virginia State Police and the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission -- which traditionally appeared before the committee to oppose certain gun bills, such as guns in cars and guns in bars -- were conspicuously absent from hearings this time, with a new administration in charge. "I'm not saying they were muscled, but it was strange to see them go from strongly opposing to having no opinion," he said.
So are they being strong-armed by McDonnell, or were they strong-armed by Kaine?
The better question to ask is, "Why are we payingemployees who work for us, to lobbylawmakers who represent us about laws that affect us, the citizens of Virginia?"

TFred
 

Grapeshot

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TFred wrote:
Glock27Bill wrote:
The senator said organizations such as the Virginia State Police and the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission -- which traditionally appeared before the committee to oppose certain gun bills, such as guns in cars and guns in bars -- were conspicuously absent from hearings this time, with a new administration in charge. "I'm not saying they were muscled, but it was strange to see them go from strongly opposing to having no opinion," he said.
So are they being strong-armed by McDonnell, or were they strong-armed by Kaine?
The better question to ask is, "Why are we payingemployees who work for us, to lobbylawmakers who represent us about laws that affect us, the citizens of Virginia?"

TFred
Isn't in their job descriptions? :banghead:

Yata hey
 

skidmark

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Marsh just announced his resignation.

With significant speculation that a) he will accept a position as an Alcoholic Beverage Control Boad commisioner and b) that his daughter will be pushed as his "replacement".

Henry made his bones in the 1950s-1960s fight against segregation. Since then he has been the poster boy for getting his constituents to be totally and utterly dependent on government largess.

But full disclosure: there were a couple of times that, as a minority, I benefited from some of the policies he rammed down the throats of the voters. (I'll still bet he never expected a middle-class (economic minority) white guy (racial minority) to demand his minority preferences.:banana::monkey:banana:

stay safe.
 

skidmark

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They going to give him a 21 gun salute when he croaks ?

IIRC he is a veteran, so will qualify for a 3-shot volley by a firing party.*

But 21-gun salutes are reserved for heads of state.

stay safe.

* - Might be a good idea to have the volleys with live ammo and aimed at the casket, just to make sure. (Yes, I'm going to go to Hell for that one. And so are a bunch of the rest of you. I'll be sure to pull some chairs up close to the fire for all y'all latecomers.
 
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