Senate hearing speakers passionate but still polite

Lawrence Lessig, a noted political activist, recently attended a Legislative Hall debate concerning Senate Concurrent Resolution 6, which would add Delaware to the list of states calling for an Article 5 convention.

Lessig was so impressed with how well how our state’s citizens and governing bodies conducted themselves that he gushed: “Democracy in Delaware. As it should be everywhere.”

I decided I needed a little taste of Delaware-style democracy myself.

In truth, I was also looking for a bit of a political brawl. The hearing I attended last Wednesday was for Senate Bill 83, which would amend Delaware’s Domestic Violence code.

The reason to expect a fight: The bill involves guns. The measure would require those under a Protection From Abuse order to give up their guns immediately, as soon as the PFA is granted.

It’s an emotional issue. On one side are people seeking to prevent domestic abuse victims from being shot. On the other are those committed to protecting both gun and property rights.

But the hearing was calm.

The upstairs gallery was nearly empty. The Senate chamber itself was largely devoid of members, leading Sen. Margaret Rose Henry, D-Wilmington, to remark that the hearing was being broadcast throughout the building. Senators could be watching from their offices, she said, though I had a hard time imagining them glued to their sets.

About 30 people, lobbyists and regular citizens, spoke at the hearing. They were polite and civil, though not without passion, when speaking for their cause.

The lone exception was a man who ended with something close to a threat if the measure were to pass: “We will no longer comply with unconstitutional laws,” he vowed before stalking off.

Which struck me as odd. Working within the system, the NRA has been extraordinarily successful in expanding gun rights. Walking away from that system sounds like a bad idea.

Shannon Alford, an NRA lobbyist, presented one of the main arguments against the bill. According to Alford, the bill would make women less safe.

Men can get PFAs too, she said. She told a story about how she had once slapped a man who abused her. Under the proposed law, she said, he could have gone to a judge, gotten a PFA and had her gun taken away, leaving her defenseless.

It’s hard to find statistics to back this up, though. Repeated Google searches yielded nothing about men seeking PFAs against women. Men might be victims of domestic abuse by women, but they rarely go to court for PFAs.

The situation described by Alford seems almost theoretical.

Sadly, there’s nothing theoretical about the problem women face from their domestic abusers.

According to recent article by Liane Sorenson, a former Republican state legislator, a total of 6,410 women in the U.S., from 2001 and 2012, were killed by a male intimate partner with a gun.

One speaker delivered a strong statement that wound up weakening his case. He charged that PFAs were “given out like candy.”

Lindsay Nichols, senior attorney with the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, pushed back hard against this characterization.

First, victims must certify there is abuse, under penalty of law. Second, the ex parte decisions, which would result in an immediate loss of firearms, could only be issued by a court if there was an “immediate and present danger to the victim.”

In his statement, former state auditor Dennis Greenhouse said that in the past year “46 percent of PFAs were denied.”

The system may not be perfect, but PFAs are hardly passed out like candy.

Several speakers said that S.B. 83 would violate due process, since people would be forced to give up their guns before they had a chance to state their case. (Under the law, a hearing before a judge would be held within 10 days.)

But as Jerry Holt, a gun owner from Newark, said, “Possession of a gun can be restored. Life can not be restored.”

The bill has been voted out of committee. Of course, even if the Senate does pass the measure, that doesn’t mean it becomes law. It would first have to go to the House, where chances for another prominent bill, S.B. 40, are fading.

S.B. 40 would repeal the death penalty in Delaware. A similar bill, under a different number, died in committee last session.

Recent developments suggested a better chance this time around. This year’s bill passed the Senate 11-9, slightly better than last session’s 11-10.

Nationally, death row inmates have been exonerated. Locally, rampant problems within the chief medical examiner’s office demonstrated the imperfections within Delaware’s criminal justice system.

Finally, last month, red state Nebraska became the seventh state since 2007 to abolish the death penalty, perhaps paving the way for blue state Delaware to follow suit.

So far, though, the fate of death penalty repeal remains the same as last time; the bill’s bottled up in the House Judiciary Committee.

Last week it was reported that Rep. Sean Lynn, D-Dover, was considering suspending House rules to have the bill brought directly to the floor for a vote, bypassing the committee.

But he didn’t seem too enthusiastic about that approach when I ran into him last week at Legislative Hall.

Members would have to vote to suspend the rules. This is where counting votes comes into play. Counting votes seems easy, but it’s trickier than it sounds.

According to Lynn, S.B. 40 has enough votes to pass if it came to the floor “organically,” in other words, through the committee system.

But, he said, some of those votes would fall away if an attempt were made to suspend the rules. That’s because bucking the leadership, such as House Speaker Pete Schwartzkopf, D-Rehoboth, who opposes the move, would have “consequences.”

And legislators, just like everyone else, don’t always like facing the consequences.


Don Flood is a former newspaper editor living near Lewes.  He can be reached at floodpolitics@gmail.com.