Sign the Petition Against the Baltimore Paintball Ban!

[raehl]

If you are a store or field, please download a copy of the petition to have your customers sign.

If you are an individual player, check the location list to find a location near you to go and sign the petition and encourage everyone you know to do the same, ESPECIALLY if they live in Baltimore City - even if they've never played paintball before.

The petition, locations, and more detailed information can all be found at the American Paintball Players Association website, www.paintball-players.org.

Thanks,
Chris

*** Mods, if you could classic this, much appreciated.

[shartley]

[shartley]

Here is the verbiage of the petition as posted on the site listed above:

Dear Baltimore City Council Members:

We, the undersigned, believe that pending bills 02-0703 & 02-0713, which would criminalize the otherwise lawful possession of sporting equipment necessary for paintball players to engage in their sport, present an undue hardship on Baltimore City and other nearby residents and business owners. We believe that a broad ban of such sporting equipment is neither necessary nor effective in promoting public safety. We respectfully request that the Baltimore City Council drop bills 02-0703 and 02-0713 in favor of legislation that strictly prohibits and penalizes the misuse of paintball guns without impacting their proper and safe possession, transfer, discharge and transport.

We thank the Baltimore City Council for taking the time to listen to our views.

[raehl]

Well, there's the small picture and the big picture here...

In the smaller picture, Baltimore, we've been proactive about contacting stores and fields in the area, and we've asked them to keep one petition for people who live in Baltimore City and one petition for everyone else. We can thus say "This is how many of your voters disagree with this law" and "This is how many other people disagree with this law - just so you know people outside of Baltimore are watching." It's also important to get people in the AREA of Baltimore, because the law does affect them by subjecting ANYONE who travels through the city with a paintball marker to a 60 day term.

In the bigger picture, i.e. legislative action against paintball, this allows us to get people used to the concept of having petitions at their local stores and fields and gets those locations used to the process of having petitions, encouraging people to sign them, and getting them back to us. While in Maryland the signatures are especially important to the issue at hand, the signatures elsewhere still have an effect and are good practice to boot. Remember, we're not only fighting this law now, but setting up the infrastructure to respond to all laws in the future. We have a little extra time this time around since we caught this one early, but we also need to be able to do this on a much shorter time frame, maybe even a week, in the future. Getting a network of stores and fields who are concerned about legislation and can act on short notice hasn't been done and needs to be done.

In terms of the language, the language wasn't just thrown together by me, but has been passed around several people who represent several interests. The petition follows the KISS method - We the undersigned are opposed to the laws you have proposed to ban paintball. Period. Some thought had been given to other alternatives, but for reasons I'm not going to get into on a public web board, it was determined that this was the best way to go. On "Paintball Gun" vs. "Paintball Marker" - while Marker sounds better for general public use, the law says Gun, the people who are going to be signing the petition understand gun, and the Baltimore City Councilmembers, while they are not likely to be influenced by the use of the word "marker" instead of "gun", could be confused by such use. ("We have a law about paintball guns here, what is a paintball marker?")

On nearby communities - these laws hurt everyone. Nobody "gains" anything - if you live in the city and can't buy a paintball marker in the city, you can't buy one outside of the city and bring it home either. There's also some talk that if the law gets passed in Baltimore City, it'll then get passed in Baltimore County, and then get passed in Maryland. (As whoever is behind this law will likely say "We've got this law in Baltimore, but it's not woking because we don't have it in the surrounding areas in Baltimore County. And since Baltimore City constitutes a lot of the votes/money of Baltimore County.... you get the idea.)

Hope that helps clear up why it's written the way it is.

- Chris

[Skoad]

Give them a foot, they will take a mile...
everyone should sign it

[shartley]

Thank you for your response. If I may comment on a couple points.

In the smaller picture, Baltimore, we've been proactive about contacting stores and fields in the area, and we've asked them to keep one petition for people who live in Baltimore City and one petition for everyone else. We can thus say "This is how many of your voters disagree with this law" and "This is how many other people disagree with this law - just so you know people outside of Baltimore are watching."

It's also important to get people in the AREA of Baltimore, because the law does affect them by subjecting ANYONE who travels through the city with a paintball marker to a 60 day term.

In the bigger picture, i.e. legislative action against paintball, this allows us to get people used to the concept of having petitions at their local stores and fields and gets those locations used to the process of having petitions, encouraging people to sign them, and getting them back to us. While in Maryland the signatures are especially important to the issue at hand, the signatures elsewhere still have an effect and are good practice to boot.

Remember, we're not only fighting this law now, but setting up the infrastructure to respond to all laws in the future. We have a little extra time this time around since we caught this one early, but we also need to be able to do this on a much shorter time frame, maybe even a week, in the future. Getting a network of stores and fields who are concerned about legislation and can act on short notice hasn't been done and needs to be done.

In terms of the language, the language wasn't just thrown together by me, but has been passed around several people who represent several interests. The petition follows the KISS method - We the undersigned are opposed to the laws you have proposed to ban paintball. Period. Some thought had been given to other alternatives, but for reasons I'm not going to get into on a public web board, it was determined that this was the best way to go. On "Paintball Gun" vs. "Paintball Marker" - while Marker sounds better for general public use, the law says Gun, the people who are going to be signing the petition understand gun, and the Baltimore City Councilmembers, while they are not likely to be influenced by the use of the word "marker" instead of "gun", could be confused by such use. ("We have a law about paintball guns here, what is a paintball marker?")

On nearby communities - these laws hurt everyone. Nobody "gains" anything - if you live in the city and can't buy a paintball marker in the city, you can't buy one outside of the city and bring it home either. There's also some talk that if the law gets passed in Baltimore City, it'll then get passed in Baltimore County, and then get passed in Maryland. (As whoever is behind this law will likely say "We've got this law in Baltimore, but it's not woking because we don't have it in the surrounding areas in Baltimore County. And since Baltimore City constitutes a lot of the votes/money of Baltimore County.... you get the idea.)

Give them a foot, they will take a mile...
everyone should sign it

[raehl]

Ok, lets try this again.

I'm not going to go point by point, but I think this should explain things.

Lots of reasoning is not going to be explained on the website, because lots of reasoning is not going to be made public. Anyone, paintball supporter and paintball anti-zealot alike, can read the website. So if you feel like you're only getting half the story, well... that's because you're only getting half the story.

If you want more of the story, you'll need to get involved with the organization beyond the "Reading the website and web boards" level. The people who have taken a really proactive role in this situation know pretty much everything, the people who sit back and read websites know what's on the websites.

I will say that in this particular instance, the original goal was to get petitions in paintball stores and fields around Baltimore so that Baltimore City residents would be able to sign them. We're publicizing it everywhere because even if you don't live in Baltimore, you may know someone who does, and should thus get them to sign it, paintball player or not. As a result of all this, other people wanted to get involved who wern't in the immediate area, and their involvement would have positive benifits (both on this issue and in general) and not hurt anything, so there was certainly no reason to turn them down. I was just pointing out what some of the general benifits were.

In any case, everyone knows what the petition they're signing says, and everyone knows what that petition is going to be used for. We've left it to the potential signers to determine what level of effort they're willing to expend in relation to the impact their particular signature will have. Could we say "Don't bother signing if you're out of state"? Sure. But why not let people make their own decision? Everyone certainly has enough information to make an informed decision about the action that works best for them.

- Chris

[shartley]

[ShinyGuy]

Shartley: I don't know how big an industry paintball is in Baltimore right now but by showing the powers that be how big an industry paintball is world wide we do acomplish something. The voices of the people directly effected by the ban definately count for more than those of us out here in California, but by showing them the size of the industry as a whole we make it clear that paintball is not a sport that they want to cut out of Baltimore's economy. I'm not saying that the signitures from around the country are that important. Just don't discount them completely.

[shartley]

(no comment... I already said what I was going to say.... just giving this another UP.)

[shartley]

Up again please...