MARYLAND: Governor Signs Civil Immunity Bill

Let it be noted that both the Governor and the bill's sponsor are Democrats.

I checked the VPC & Brady sites. Not a peep about this.

Maryland has some extremely high crime areas in and around the state.

and art scene in Baltimore is a crime too.

and Baltimore is not the only problem

The rest of the state is going down hill as well. Western MD has seen a pretty big step increase in violent crime. Towns like Frostburg, MD are dealing with a lot of transplants from Frederick and Baltimore that have moved into town for college/better living conditions. In many cases those same transplants just bring their problems with them instead of making a new start. Also, there has been an exponential increase in the native dumb ass density. Put that all together and some of the locals are starting to call Frostburg "Little Baltimore". Though, I think that is a huge exaggeration of the situation.

I left Frostburg for 12 years and recently went back for a visit. I couldn't tell a difference since it still seems a lot quieter than many of the cities I have lived in since. The population seems to be quite a bit higher than before. More people...more crime, I guess.

PGC, for example, is really bad now, and I guess the police are pretty hostile now too? I've not been there in years. Just repeating what I've heard from various sources living there.

I've always had mixed feelings about guns... but if some damn fool is breaking into your house in the middle of the night, what's one supposed to do... invite them in for a beer. If I were in a high crime area, I would want some level of protection too. 911 helps, but I recall being around areas where cops did not respond to 911 in the middle of the night, that was years ago in D.C.

rate in Maryland. You are also correct about some of the police departments but many of them are corrput.

for instance, what if I'm being held up by some dude with a knife and Joe Hero whips out his gun to save me and shoots the dude with the knife?

I'm not a loved one, and I'd rather not have anyone use deadly force on my behalf, especially when I can take care of myself, and ESPECIALLY not some fat assed self appointed sheriff vigilante with a damn popgun looking for an excuse to use deadly force and get away with it.

for his own safety.

You are in the Dallas area. Everytime that you are out and about in the general public, you pass close to people carrying concealed. About 2.5% of the general population has a CHL. I am in Dallas at least five times a week. You may have passed by me. If so, I was armed. However, Dallas is so big that you probably haven't passed by me, but by other armed citizens instead.

I'm saying if someone threatens me with a knife and YOU pull a gun you better be prepared to use it on both of us - I don't require assistance, and especially don't require assistance in the form of deadly force.

anyway we've wandered off topic in both directions - my point was hypberbole. If I lived in Maryland and some bozo who took himself too seriously decided to go shoot someone on my behalf because he or she thought I was threatened I would not be very happy if it came to pass.

About CHL, I don't care. About legislating away your responsibility in actually making use of your weapon in a situation in which you are not directly in harms way yourself - I have a considerably less charitable view.

That could be funny. You may be attempting to physically disarm an off-duty police officer, or retired cop. Even if it is just a citizen with a CHL, and you try to take their gun away from them, then you will be iniating an illegal attack.

If someone had just defended you against a street criminal who is armed with a knife, you will likely be bleeding rather severely. All criminals have to establish situation dominance before they can proceed with the crime. I the thug is using a knife, that means that he will usually cut you at the start to show that he is serious and to establish control over you. You will have a difficult time taking care of yourself with a big knife slash across your belly.

think they would have any success at it, when hardened, practiced criminals seem to have such a poor track record, and even police have a difficult time disarming others...

Must be the ninja-ness.

You would have no legal recourse.

You have no physical recourse. What are you going to do about it, take their gun and beat them up?

...CHL shooter that saved his life to call an ambulance.

I wouldn't want to come to the defense of a person who would resent it, and I certainly wouldn't want to provoke a conflict with a person I was trying to help. Unfortunately, I can't readily differentiate those such as yourself from people who would appreciate it. That being the case, I would default to protection. This leaves us with a dilemma.

How about, in exchange for my promise not to come to your aid, you wear a conspicuous article of some kind(maybe a large pin with a quickly recognizable shape and color) to the effect of "IN CASE OF MORTAL THREAT, DO NOT ASSIST". You may resent the need for such a device, but again, I'd rather risk upsetting you than allowing an innocent to die at the hands of a thief and murderer. It's a matter of practicality that, to prevent an unfortunate mistake, you take steps to identify yourself ahead of time.

In some cases, your neighbors can help with this.



Of course I'm not accusing you of being a gun-banner; from the last sentence of your post it seems clear you aren't. I'm just engaging in a bit of hyperbole.

Would that be okay?

If your behavior on this forum is anything to go by, you talk tough, but I notice that when someone calls you on your inflammatory comments, you invariably back down (as in your post #16). So you're going to have to forgive me if I'm more than a little skeptical that your physical courage and prowess is quite as high as you'd like us to believe.

Or if you'd like to me rephrase the above in more direct terms, I think you're full of shit.

You take karate.

:eyes:

Nirvana is established...

Sounds like something with a insanely high failure rate.

Joe Hero, jr.

Got it.

However, he probably would not be immune to possible civil lawsuits from the family of the assailant.

In any event, you're making a lot of assumptions there about the nature of people who carry concealed. For instance, it might interest you to know that in a large and growing number of places half of concealed carry users are women, and that the vast majority of defensive uses of a firearm end without a shot being fired, let alone the assailant dying.

and I didn't generalize too much. :P

If you're being mugged at knifepoint in somebody else's house or workplace, I'd say there's something odd going on. And if it's, say, a convenience store, chances are the robbery won't be directed at you specifically, but primarily at the guy operating it.

Instead of having to live with knowing that you are wrong.

defending your home. I am very glad to see Democrats doing this and I hope we get some publicity out of it to confound the "Democrats are anti-gun" crowd.


mark

Laws like this don't make it hunting season or anything. All they do is protect businessmen and homeowners when they are faced with the direst of extremes.

The bill pertains to defending yourself and family from harm in general (knife, bat, fists, feet, guns...)
Does it matter if you use a maglight 4D flashlight or a 12ga shotgun to defend yourself?
The end result is the same: you are protected from civil damages when forced to defend yourself.

This should be in general or regional discussion.

rights to civil suits of over $20 being tossed out.

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.


Love how every one knows the Second forward and backward, then just disregard the Seventh. No immunity, caps or reversals by higher courts.

When I am being illegally threatened with deadly force, my own use of counter-force will be for the purpose of removing the threat to me. It will not be because I want to shortcut the judicial process. So the 7th is NOT being thrown out, in fact it is being followed. I will be following due legal process every step of the way.

Civil immunity simply stops the victim from being victimized again by money-hunger ambulance chasing, obituary reading, trial lawyers.

The Seventh Amendment is clear. It is up to a jury to decide if financial awards are in order.

Just take the same logic and apply it to the Second Amendment. No one should be victimized by a handgun, death, injury and loss of property because some one was able to buy a gun. You are either for a strict interpretation of the Constitution or you aren't. So, now we can pick which parts of the Constitution are valid? That my friend, destroys all arguments for the Second. I posted the Seventh, please read it and tell me how immunity from civil cases is valid?

I support both the Second and the Seventh. I don't see caps on oil companies liability or immunity from civil cases for government employs or immunity from liability in self defense is legal. The Constitution leaves all cases of more that $20. up to a jury, period.

It's just that it won't get past the motions stage.

eta: Also note that this portion of the 7th amendment hasn't been incorporated against the states- see Minneapolis & St Louis R Co v Bombolis

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

That's what I thought.

My impression was that the Seventh says that, in cases in which you are able to sue, you have the right to have the matter decided by a jury as opposed to a judge (if there's more than $20 involved). It doesn't guarantee a right to sue in the first place.

is there stated a right to bear arms for personal protection, only to defend a free state. People jump up and down saying the state can not infringe, yet blow off the words of the 7th.
Is a person protected by state immunity law when he shoots an intruder and the bullet travels across the street and kills an innocent neighbor? Anyone calling for incorporation of the 2nd has a duty to call for incorporation of the 7th. The right to sue for damages in civil court is a freedom also.

In your hypothetical case of the round missing and hitting an innocent (Yes, that sometimes happens.)the injured party can definitely sue. Civil immunity does not apply in that case. But if someone is threatening me with deadly force and I shoot him, and if the state finds that I acted in legitimate self-defense, then my attacker can not sue. His hands are not clean.

It would not be fair to me to have to defend my life against a thug and then have that same thug sue me for his injuries. All rights are subject to reasonable limits. Requiring that the plaintiff have clean hands relative to his own injury is not unreasonable.

if the evidence does not reach the level of a criminal trial, the lower level of the evidence needed for a cival trial will not be met.

I think I said that right.

Oneshooter
Armed and Livin in Texas

Texas Civil Immunity is a bit stronger than most, but not by much. It does a real good job of chasing away the contingency-fee, bottom-feeding, ambulance-chasing, obituary-reading, sharks in fancy suits.

The cops and prosecutors do, not a court of law.
I spent 2 and half years in court in a civil trial and only because I had a couple of sharks in suits and pant suits did I keep out of criminal court because of a crooked cop. Her lawyer was the prosecutor and the judge a friend. Those expensive lawyers kept me from total financial ruin. I have a whole new perspective on those lawyers you dislike. I do not trust cops and prosecutors to the extent you do.

different than in a civil case. Take the OJ case. Because of the shred of doubt he beat the case, thus you think he is innocent. Therefore you'd deny compensation to the victims family. Perhaps someone you have had trouble with shoots you while you are walking down his rural dirt road. He then drags you in the house and puts a knife in your hand. Then his lawyer makes a case for that shred of doubt. Immunity gives him a free pass on a small shred of doubt and denies your wife the Constitutional right to prove otherwise.

It all ways sounds so simple. You shoot some one threatening you and, of course you are justified. If so why would a jury of your peers decide other wise?

As I said elsewhere, in a self-defense case, the facts are not in dispute: it is acknowledged by all sides that the defendant did indeed use lethal force against the purported assailant, which places the onus upon the defendant to prove to the satisfaction of the court that the use of lethal force was justified (by showing the elements of Ability, Opportunity and Jeopardy).

The O.J. Simpson case was not a self-defense case, and the facts were in dispute. Thus, the onus was on the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Simpson had murdered Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman. Thus, the burden of proof required to get Simpson acquitted was considerably lighter than that required to get a court to acquit someone who admits having used lethal force but claims doing so was justified.


I'm sure nobody will raise awkward questions about blood spatters on the road, the drag marks leading from the road to the back door, or why lividity indicates the corpse was moved after death.

The prefatory clause states why the RKBA is not merely something the state needs to tolerate, but why it it is positively in the state's interest to maintain it. It in no way limits the purposes for which the people may choose to exercise their right to keep and bear arms.

Bear in mind, moreover, that the 9th Amendment states that the enumeration of certain rights in the BoR is not intended to disparage other rights held by the people. From my perspective, it is not so much the 2nd Amendment that provides the justification for the people to keep and bear arms in self-defense as the fact that government has consistently refused to accept responsibility for protecting individual citizens, and by that token cannot claim legitimate authority to deprive individual citizens of the means to protect themselves.

I also subscribe the John Stuart Millsian notion that the only legitimate restriction on personal freedom is when it infringes upon the freedom of another. In the American system of civil law, the plaintiff is not required to pay the defendant's legal costs if the plaintiff loses. As a result, a notional right to sue even for frivolous reasons (like a burglar suing the owner of home for damages after the burglar sustained injury after tripping over a piece of furniture in the home he'd illegally broken into) does infringe in a very real sense on the freedom of the defendant, as it forces him to expend time and money (or assume debt) to mount a defense.

Bear in mind, moreover, that in a case of lethal force being used in self-defense, the defendant may well have already undergone a criminal trial; in self-defense cases, the facts are usually not in dispute (i.e. the defendant employed lethal force upon the injured party) so the onus is upon the defendant to prove that the use of lethal force was justified. The only way that such a case doesn't come to trial is if the police and/or public prosecutor thinks it's so damn obvious use of lethal force was justified that they can't be bothered to pursue the matter.

It is utterly ludicrous that someone who has already proved to the satisfaction of the criminal justice system (i.e. the state) that his use of lethal force was justified should then be forced by that same state to submit to a civil trial to establish of what has already been established! Except with less chance of "winning" ("winning" is relative when having to defend yourself bankrupts you, even if the verdict goes in your favor).

I'm a card-carrying member of the ACLU, and I agree with the organization's position that civil liberties are meaningless if they're only protected from infringement by the government, and not from infringement by other private actors, be it individuals or corporations. The putative individual right to sue cannot be absolute; it has to be weighed against the prospective defendant's right not to have his freedom infringed upon with the authority of the state for the sake of some bullshit civil suit.

and rely on police and prosecutors to determine facts impartially. Many people of power, ie, cops, are found not culpable when others of less power or standing are guilty in their eyes.
Take BP. Guilty but immune to lawsuits over $75 million. Winning is relative when it bankrupts you and not BP.
You are willing to give up your rights to sue over to police and prosecutors. Why not just give up your rights to gun ownership to a prosecutor or cop?
Just as a criminal demands his day in court, bullshit or not, and 6th Amendment rights, I want my day in court and 7th rights.

I didn't actually say anything that you claim I did.

"...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Pretty much covers it, eh?

As far as total incorporation. Sure, I'll go for that.

If you indeed have a right to sue, what about sovereign immunity? How do you deal with that? Is it okay for the state to say you can't sue the state, but not that you can't sue your neighbor?

clear that you have the right to sue than the 2nd does on the right to own guns for self defense. It only mentions defense of a free nation. Case law has made that law and made civil immunity law. Both can change.

The seventh says nothing about a right to sue. The second says the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

You sound like the people who say that there is a right to privacy, but not in what you decide to put in your own body.

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Suits at common law. Not statutory law.

The right to the jury and an assurance of the finality of that verdict is what is being protected here, not the right to sue.