(December 1, 2000) How many examples of arrogant disregard for rule of law must leadership throw in the public's face before people actually do something about it?

At issue is a new restriction that took effect 1 October of this year. Maryland's law in Article 27, Section 36C-1, says simply: "A law enforcement agency seeking to dispose of an agency owned handgun shall: (1) destroy the handgun; (2) sell, exchange, or transfer the handgun to another law enforcement agency for official use by that agency; (3) sell the handgun to a retired state police officer …; or (4) sell the handgun to the law enforcement officer to whom the handgun was assigned."

This was part of the omnibus package of gun control that Parris Glendening with his buddies Mike Miller and Cas Taylor drove through legislature in the spring. The mandate that police guns be destroyed (rather than allowed to "go back on the street") always seemed silly to us, and there was certainly no evidence saying this measure might result in some substantive improvement of public safety. But mandate it they did, with a host of other laws.

Now we see that Baltimore County Police are trading in their duty sidearms for new products. This was common before, because it saved money, but gosh … it's against the law now. In fact, police leadership went to Annapolis to testify that they believed doing this is a criminal act. It was bad enough that Baltimore City and other localities rushed to trade in guns before the 1 October date of enactment, but how can Baltimore County Police get away with flaunting the law like this?

According to reports, officials claim they had signed a contract arranging the deal four months before the new ban kicked in. Well, that's just peachy. The same new law bans sale of guns that don't have a case shipped with it for a ballistic fingerprint. What do you think the odds are of Maryland State Police agreeing that you could bring a new handgun into the state without a case, if you had only ordered it before the date of enactment? Yeah, right.

In the same corrupt spirit, we now discover agencies like the Maryland State Police and in some cases individual cops are buying new handguns without having to supply a case for ballistic fingerprinting. Police are not given an exemption, but in bulling forward to get guns you and I can no longer buy, they cite an exemption given to police in an entirely different section of code. Well, excuse us for pointing out that the scope of the law as it was written simply doesn't give cops or agencies that freedom. Too bad that following a law we all knew was broken before it ever passed the legislature is inconvenient for the administration that drove it through.

Police officials testified about the need for both a gun disposal mandate and ballistic fingerprinting. And now they flaunt their own law. We said during session what everyone knew: the bill was about a photo-op with Bill Clinton, not about public safety. Having the same officials now violate criminal law as a matter of convenience only drives our point home. The honesty and integrity of the state's top cops are now out on display where everyone can see the stain, demeaning the credibility of street cops who do the heavy lifting. This is a fact legislators must consider when those same officials inevitably come back to town shilling and shopping with a new legislative agenda.