Hearing was yesterday. It was passed on to the Senate with amendments (won't know what the substance of the amendments are, they should be posted later today or first of next week). The amendments will likely water down some of the liability immunity, but we'll see.
I wanted to thank those that contributed and submitted testimony or called their legislators. However, I did want to point out s few things. It is impossible to say how many individuals helped with this because there is no way to track who spoke to their respective legislators. But, at the hearing there was only 15 people that submitted testimony. Now, I understand that some of you are not instructors, so you may not have felt inclined to help. But, I think that may be a mistake. One of the biggest problems we have is that the legislators do not view us as a big enough block of voters to be very concerned about voting against our issues. We must, IMHO, change that. We must show that not only do we stand together, but we support our various interests as if they were our own. We cannot let "them" feel as if they can divide up the issues by fractionating our "coalition." In other words, just because this was an "instructor" issue, doesn't mean that ALL gun owners shouldn't have submitted testimony. We must, again IMHO, start flexing our collective muscle and that cannot happen if we tell ourselves that "this issue doesn't affect me, so I'm not getting involved."
It also would have been good "practice" in submitting testimony. Remember, while it is generally better to write something for your testimony, you can also go to the website and just submit that you support or oppose the bill and not write anything else. So, may I suggest that when this measure gets its hearing in the Senate, that everyone submit testimony. In the meantime, call the members of the Senate Judicary and Public Safety committees (where this will likely be heard), especially if your Represenative is on one of those committees, and start the dialogue now. Start writing any testimony now. Notice about hearings may come with little advance notice and testimony needs to be submitted 24 hours in advance.
I want to say thanks to those that helped. To those that didn't, well, that's OK, but consider how much better we could do with everyone's help. In closing, I want to mention that the only real opposition came from the Plaintiff's attorney group who has a vested interest in making sure there are pleanty of opportunities for he and his cronies to make money suing folks and therefore like keeping folks on the "liability hook." Let's not let him win.
Aloha