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PROVIDENCE — Constrained by COVID from packing the State House in person, as they have in the past, with hundreds of gun-owners in matching yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” T-shirts, gun-rights advocates are firing off emails and online posts.
Many are the electronic equivalent of form letters urging defeat of the bills up for hearing on Friday.
The NRA set the stage with this mid-February post: “In Providence, anti-gun politicians have begun stacking the hopper with bills designed to strip Rhode Islanders of their constitutional rights.”
Many of the emails reflect that view.
But many others that state Rep. Justine Caldwell has received, as the lead sponsor of bills to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and co-sponsor of a bill to ban guns from school grounds, have crossed the line from advocacy to threat.
For example, one online post threatened to come to the lawmaker’s East Greenwich home and “show me what an assault weapon can really do.”
Caldwell, the 38-year-old mother of two elementary-school-age children, says she is not surprised by the tactics of those she calls “extremists” in the debate.
With the defeat at the polls last November of NRA “A”-rated House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello, she said: “That community is feeling desperate this year.”
“I have been overwhelmed with those sorts of messages in a way that is much different than in the past two years when I introduced these bills.”
“I have been hearing from a lot of folks on the other side of this issue, a huge majority of them not from my district. They send a form email saying this is not the year to hear the guns bills at all, actually, because they are not going to be able to be there in person.”
“A lot of form emails. A lot of nastiness, as you can imagine. I have gotten a lot of threatening and violent and disgusting messages sent to me personally.”
“They have called me every sort of derogatory name you can imagine and [some] you could not imagine, just really hateful, violent and misogynist.”
Caldwell provided a sampling of the emails sent to her and the members of the House Judiciary Committee that will be holding the day-long hearing on Friday.
Some are forceful, familiar and polite.
For example: “These bills will turn tens of thousands of law abiding Rhode Islanders into criminals for owning what they legally own today. Some of the proposed legislation has been tried before without any improvements in gun safety according to the Department of Justice.
“It would also be nearly impossible to enforce these proposed laws since they will affect nearly every gun owner in RI.”
And finally: “The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic will also make it very difficult for people in Rhode Island to testify and the legislature should not be conducting hearings on hot social issues during a pandemic. …There are far more important issues facing Rhode Island today than gun control.”
But another, from one of the more outspoken figures in the gun-rights fight, said:
“WHAT PART OF SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?? We will not comply to this [B-S] tyranny! Caldwell you should be in jail for treason and anyone who supports this crap.
“Get over yourself WE WILL NOT ALLOW YOU PEOPLE TO TOUCH OUR 2nd Amendment….If it means me running for office and having each and everyone of your asses put up on charges for treason than I will. Enough is a damn enough!”
Another threatened a “civil war.”
“If you want a civil war then keep on pushing the sleeping bear. NO ONE is taking my right to bear arms and there are thousands upon thousands of patriots just like me that feel the same way I do.
“Women like you need to be abolished from politics!”
“People try to tell me there are extremists on both sides of this issue and that they are law-abiding citizens,” Caldwell said Monday.
But “I think if you are threatening not to follow the law, and come to my home and show me what an assault weapon can do, you don’t sound like a law-abiding citizen to me. You don’t sound like someone who should have dangerous weapons.”
The gun-control bills at the top of Caldwell’s legislative wish list were all sponsored at the request of former Lt. Gov., and now Gov., Dan McKee, Attorney General Peter Neronha, General Treasurer Seth Magaziner and Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea.
With the State House still closed to the public, the House Judiciary meeting notice has links for people to submit written testimony or to sign up to testify remotely.
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