(February 27, 2001) In a victory for grassroots activism in western Maryland, House Speaker Casper Taylor just announced his role in bringing about temporary change to the de facto gun ban created by MSP's ballistic fingerprint mandate.
As readers and handgun buyers know, overreach by Maryland State Police has had a chilling effect on availability of handguns in the last five months. Though the new law applies only to manufacturers, MSP's creatively written regulations now let them get tough with dealers and distributors. Indeed police have threatened action against such third parties if they chose to do business in Maryland without playing ball with MSP. Understandably, most have declined to risk being the target of an out-of-control administration.
This gun control could not have become law without the iron fist of Cas Taylor driving it through the House last year. Since that time, Taylor's constituents have come to understand and resent the role he played. A groundswell of controversy has both lingered and grown in his Cumberland district for almost a year.
Reacting to pressure from back home, Taylor just announced a deal with MSP. Retired state troopers will for a six month time be hired to perform the ballistic tests locally. (At first the idea was for a dealer to perform this testing, but this was nixed once the administration realized how it would worsen the existing chain-of-custody problems.) Presumably a grace period will give companies time to implement their own shell case collection plans.
No gun groups we're aware of support this temporary measure, but Taylor's very attempt to effect change is itself a major acknowledgement to the power of grassroots activism. Public recognition that there's a problem is the first step to repair. For someone who played such a fundamental role in passing the law to now admit the idea is flawed is both difficult and rare. Real repair won't happen overnight, so we welcome the good parts of Taylor's move as a courageous first step, and are willing to work with him to fix the rest of the problem. We hope he's willing too.
And what's wrong with the near-term patch? Chiefly that it doesn't address the fundamental underlying problem, namely, that distributors and dealers are terrified to do business in a climate subject to constant change by an out-of-control Maryland State Police. Manufacturers can ultimately provide shell cases, not that anyone has proven to taxpayers here that this is a cost-effective way to investigate crime. (That remains an open question never asked by our legislature.) But it's distributors who largely no longer ship to Maryland. When MSP spokesmen go on CNN and tell the rest of the country how it will be subject to Smith&Wesson style civil lawsuits for not following fickle MSP guidelines, businesses lacking a bottomless pit of litigation funding know the solution is to write us off.
Taylor has all along possessed the means to ensure equitable implementation of this law. As Speaker he makes the appointments to his Joint Committee on Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review (AELR.) This body is charged with overseeing agencies' regulations and practices. AELR doesn't make the law, they simply verify that administrators apply the law validly and equitably. Unfortunately AELR has abandoned oversight responsibility of MSP's gun regulations. Instead of remaining afraid of MSP and allowing it unchecked regulatory overreach, AELR should review the practices and simply reject provisions that are not supported by law. That by itself would go a long way to reassuring the firearms industry that the environment here is not so out of control.
Other aspects of Taylor's latest deal will remain in the purview of voters. During the six month period, MSP will charge $20 for each gun they fire. ("Blue light special in aisle six! You can't have your rights, but for a short time only we'll sell them back to you for a mere $20 fee. Act now, time is running out!") But MSP's Col. Mitchell has acknowledged to the press that MSP will cover costs of the program from a federal grant. What we as tax payers think of the Glendening-Kennedy administration double-charging is something only we as voters can fix in 2002.
Some think that Taylor's deal is a deft political way to put off the problem until after legislative session is over, at which point nothing can be done. It will certainly allow Taylor to muddy the water when activists tell of his role in passing new gun control. That's true. Cas didn't get to where he is now without learning a political trick or two.
But real reform of the ballistic fingerprinting problem remains possible, even if Taylor's deal reduces pressure for it. It's available as Delegate Kevin Kelly's HB 185. This bill uses my own favorite word: repeal. It proposes to repeal the shell case mandate. Ballistic fingerprinting may still get the full airing it needs, yet was denied last year.