(November 1, 1999) Maryland State Police must annually undergo an audit of its performance in processing applications to purchase a handgun. Now, firearm owners have endured MSP shenanigans for years, but early last legislative session word leaked out that at least one citizen died at the hand of a criminal whose handgun purchase should have been denied but was not (due to the inept handling of paperwork.) We all looked forward to this year's audit with interest.

Well, the gun units got a clean bill of health from auditors, and the legislative committee overseeing the check didn't probe to find out that all the office workers did was shovel paperwork over to investigative units. (This stopped the time clock on those examples. Applications? What applications? Just like in years past ...)

But surprise! The next week brings a Washington Post expose on how upwards of 30% of protection orders (say, in domestic violence cases) are not being correctly handled by police, allowing many who should have been put on hold to get handguns. The two Spicknall children died by the hand of someone apparently in this category: the father was subject to a protective order, was not entered as such by state police, and ultimately he bought a handgun used to kill those kids, all with state police blessing. Somehow we think the Spicknall family would rather Superintendent David B. Mitchell be back in Jessup doing data entry instead of out stumping for even more gun controls he won't enforce.

In fairness to the legislative committee, MSP handling of that type of paperwork was not in the scope of the annual legislative audit, and that is our point: Establishing strong civilian review of MSP activities should be a top priority for the coming legislative session.

Word from one MSP source is that they are considering another slowdown of processing handgun applications at the end of this year, informally trying to put the skids on 'proliferation of weapons' right before the Y2K festivities. Will they do the public a service by slowing the transfer of handguns to last-minute shoppers? We don't think so.

It's not clear how a legislative oversight committee would distinguish implementation of such a plan from seasonal personnel disruptions ... all they want is the average turnaround for the year back to normal by next summer. Time will tell.

Maryland State Police have no authority to do this, but what would stop them? Absolutely nothing at all.