Maybe Glendening should put “trucker-proof truck locks” on all 18
wheelers…

…also news about the Emerson case going to the 5th US Circuit Court of
Appeals.

Original at:

http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2000/Mar-12-Sun-2000/opinion/13130167.html

> At midday March 1, a 53-year-old registered nurse
> anaesthetist with the same name as actress Linda
> Hamilton — a grandmother who’s been licensed by
> Massachusetts to carry a handgun for the past 10 years
> — was headed eastbound on through the village of
> North Adams.
> “I noticed an 18-wheeler looming in my rearview
> mirror,” Ms. Hamilton writes. “He drove up to within 10
> feet of my Blazer, and then lunged his truck at my
> vehicle as if he was going to ram it. He pulled out as if to
> pass me — we were on a two-lane road — and then
> pulled back in behind me. He repeated this behavior
> four times.
> “I was in fear for my life. For over a quarter mile
> there is no place to pull over. There were no other
> people around.”
> So, Hamilton took out the snubnosed .38 Rossi
> she’s licensed by the state to carry. “I put it in my right
> hand and put my hand back on the steering wheel. The
> truck driver immediately backed off. I pulled in at the
> first place there were people and a pay phone. I called
> the Shelburne State Police barracks and told them of the
> incident.
> “As soon as I mentioned what I had done with my
> gun, I was put on the defensive by the officer on the
> phone. Instead of thanking me for handling the situation
> in a responsible way, which protected me and hurt no
> one, the issue suddenly became the gun and only the
> gun, and not the fact that lives were in jeopardy from an
> out-of-control trucker. The trooper said to me, `You
> should not have drawn your gun; a complaint could be
> filed.’ ”
> “Excuuuse me,” Ms. Hamilton writes, “but why on
> earth am I carrying a gun? To keep my hip warm?”
> The cops know who the trucker was, but won’t tell
> Linda Hamilton or her husband Russ. Instead, a couple
> of lady troopers flagged Ms. Hamilton down, asked her
> permission to search her vehicle, searched it anyway
> when she refused permission, and found and seized her
> legally licensed revolver.
> Fortunately, Russ Hamilton tells me Massachusetts
> (unlike many states) has no easily misinterpreted law
> against “brandishing” a weapon. The Gun Owners
> Action League referred the Hamiltons to attorney
> Robert Chesbro in Williamstown.
> “I put them on notice they were leaving me
> defenseless, and that I wanted a police escort home,”
> Mrs. Hamilton adds. “They refused.”
> Taxachusetts, of course, has so far abandoned the
> tradition of Lexington and Concord (where Redcoat
> efforts to seize civilian arms were not well received) that
> their welcoming billboards now read: “Have A Gun, Go
> To Jail.”
> While Russ Hamilton says the cops are dead wrong
> — “Under Massachusetts law you can keep a loaded
> firearm in your vehicle if you’re a licensed owner” — he
> also admits: “We stopped one mile short. We found a
> piece of land we liked, but it’s one mile short of
> Vermont. In Vermont there are no gun laws whatsoever,
> and it has the lowest crime rate in the U.S. We kick
> ourselves in the butt that we missed it by one mile.”
> Meantime, maybe the Second Amendment isn’t
> dead in courts, after all.
> The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — which
> overturned the original “gun-free school zones” law –
> has announced it will hear oral arguments this spring in
> the Emerson case.
> Federal Judge Sam Cummings last year dismissed
> an indictment against Timothy Joe Emerson for
> possession of a firearm while under a temporary
> restraining order routinely issued during his divorce case.
> In doing so, Judge Cummings specifically rejected the
> government’s claim that the Second Amendment is a
> “collective” right pertaining only to the National Guard.
> Judge Cummings ruled that the subordinate “militia”
> clause in no way negates or limits the independent “right
> of the people” clause, and further notes the U.S.
> Supreme Court has determined “the people” should be
> interpreted similarly in the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth,
> and Ninth amendments.
> “This decision helps protect gun owners from the
> ever-increasing classes of people prohibited from gun
> ownership,” comments Alan Gottlieb, head of the
> Second Amendment Foundation. “Without a court
> willing to step in and put a halt to this practice, eventually
> anyone with a parking or speeding ticket could be
> prevented from gun ownership. This could be the pure
> Second Amendment case that gun owners have been
> praying for over the past half-century.”
>
> Vin Suprynowicz, the Review-Journal’s assistant
> editorial page editor, is author of “Send in the Waco
> Killers.” His column appears Sunday.