SB 211 defect analysis
Governor Parris Glendening, Senate President Mike Miller and House Speaker Cas Taylor teamed up to bring you the so-called "Responsible Gun Safety Act of 2000." Here’s what is in it for you:
It bans sale of a handgun to anyone age 30 or older.
- The bill’s plain language clearly prohibits purchase of a handgun by anyone 30 years of age or older. This is a byproduct of shoddy drafting and leadership’s demand that elected officials rubberstamp instead of legislate.
- The actual effect of this law will be left to agenda-driven bureaucrats at Maryland State Police. They’re responsible for writing regulations to implement the act. The bill’s language is poorly crafted, so even most legislators who voted for it don’t know what Maryland State Police have in mind for lawful gunowners.
It builds incentives for police to traffic in guns and violate gunowner civil rights.
- All firearms that fall into police hands must be either used by police, destroyed or made available for private sale to either police or retired state troopers.
- Police exercising judgement in a situation involving firearms must now do so with the knowledge that their decision to confiscate a gun may give them a chance to purchase it later. ("Cool gun. You’re busted.")
- The only way an agency can be compensated for either surplus or forfeited guns is by "assigning" those guns to officers who may then buy them. SB 211 doesn’t stop police guns from going into an open market; it ensures guns will go back into circulation through a new cottage industry for cops.
- The police message in our new two-class system: "We’ll get our guns, screw you."
It bars possession of a handgun by adults up to 30 years based on juvenile records.
- This was introduced with no basis cited to suggest it as a valid crime fighting step. Proponents were unable to cite any example of an adult in his 20’s who, after building a juvenile record, had lawfully purchased a handgun which he used in subsequent violent crime.
- Possession
of the handgun is barred in this case, and no language grandfathers existing gun owners. 20-something citizens with a juvenile record who lawfully purchased a handgun as an adult will become felons if they possess their property on October 1.
- Contrary to strong state precedent, juvenile records will be opened up for state police to use in fishing expeditions. A simple database check will reveal new classes of ‘gun criminals’ just waiting for state police to round up in statistics-building operations.
- Police officers who went straight after a juvenile crime record are often touted as ‘streetwise’ assets, especially in urban areas. A precise application of this law will disqualify them from possessing their agency-issued sidearms. (Yet administration officials already claim this prohibition will not apply to police.)
It bans sale of handguns that have not been ballistically fingerprinted by the state.
- In order to be sold in Maryland after October 1, 2000, a handgun must be delivered from the manufacturer with a shell casing that was discharged from that gun.
- Handguns on dealer shelves when the law takes effect will not be legal to sell in state; to meet the letter of the law, only manufacturers can do ballistic fingerprinting.
- We know of no manufacturers who will ship a shell case with handguns to sell them here later this year.
- This measure is intended to impede lawful gun sales, not fight crime. One fact makes this clear: "finger-printing" can’t work in the majority of handguns sold in Maryland. Revolvers do not eject brass at a crime scene, and each chamber in the cylinder gives a different ballistic signature to brass fired in it anyway.
- Gun "fingerprints" change. Police testimony indicated that the signature of a gun can be changed by wear in as few as a dozen firings. Simple abrasives alter the print immediately, making SB 211 another expensive bureaucracy with no prospect for results.
- This measure bans sale of registered handgun frames to competitors and hobbyists who buy receivers to build into custom firearms. Nobody can meet the mandate when buying just the regulated part. It’s like banning sale of car engine blocks that haven’t passed emissions tests the buyer can’t perform on just the part alone.
- This measure places a critical chain of custody mandate on dealers. Justice questions concerning a citizen’s freedom will be in the hands of gunshop clerks charged with keeping shells in the right box.
- Experts predict the effectiveness of matching crime scene evidence will go down once the majority of their database entries come from citizens having no link to crime. The computational complexity of processing citizen data will impede crime scene analysis.
- Wholesale collection of ‘trace’ information left by honest citizens is a horrible invasion of privacy. We don’t fingerprint all citizens in case one might leave his print at a crime scene. We don’t photograph all citizens in case one might live his image on a security camera watching crime. Yet we will now conduct ballistic profiling of all gun purchasers just in case one of them might leave shell cases next to a crime.
- The 2-10-00 Wall Street Journal documented that "ballistic fingerprinting" is the brainchild of companies seeking revenue, not police seeking crime-fighting tools. SB 211 reflects a trend of companies working hand in hand with administrations to promote gimmicks for revenue, not for public safety.
- This bill gives no police exceptions from a fingerprint mandate, yet officials already tell agencies that police gun buyers are exempt.
It mandates that all handguns sold be transferred with external trigger locks (aka ‘legality locks.’)
- Owners who secure handguns by other means must pay the added expense anyway. (But we are free to discard the locks after receiving our handgun.)
It bans sale of handguns made without an ‘integrated mechanical safety device.’
- Handguns made after 2002 must be equipped with such a device…whatever it is. The plain language definition in the bill is "a disabling or locking device that is built into a handgun and is designed to prevent the handgun from being discharged unless the device has been deactivated." Bureaucrats will decide what that means.
- The definition will be a source of litigation. Proponents claim it’s ‘that which is not widely available now.’ But opponents say this defines user-operable safeties. Each has evidence, meaning we’ll be in court a long time.
- Why have contention about definitions? Simple: at first the focus was on ‘smart guns’ and legislating concepts, rather than detail. When the administration dropped its smart gun demand, it was left with language nobody had much thought about. By that time they had to sell exactly this text rather than make changes. Advocates tried to build a paper trail pointing to narrow usage, but when this reaches the courts, they must deal with evidence that government procurement specs use just this terminology to buy handguns, specifications that are satisfied with guns having safeties. Even stronger, a House amendment was proposed to preclude pro-gun interpretation, and this was rejected, a strong indicator of legislative intent.
- Maryland’s leaders clearly state in SB 211 that citizens cannot be trusted with freedom to chose what products best serve individual needs. ‘One size fits all.’
- With integral mechanical safety devices, citizens will be allowed to turn them off but not take them off. To think this measure will result in fewer accidents one must believe that irresponsible owners (who already have effective and inexpensive ways to secure a gun) will somehow become responsible by having a new and expensive way to secure the firearm. But that isn’t the administration’s goal anyway. Glendening’s lobbyist admitted in House testimony this provision is intended to affect gun manufacturers, not gunowner behavior.
- Experienced gunowners know to expect an increase in accidents once integral locks are introduced. Owners will be tempted to store a gun loaded yet locked, giving no external indication of internal condition. Even after this bill takes effect, responsible people must still use the same measures we already employ in order to store firearms to our standards.
- New firearms will require two hands and extensive fine-motor skills to manipulate the integral locks. This denies use by senior citizens and people with physical handicaps, who can safely handle existing firearms. Legislators denied them exemption from the mandate, and so deny them the right to personal protection.
- Integrally-locked guns which might be loaded will pose extreme hazard to authorized users other than the real owner, e.g. police who encounter such a locked gun on the scene of an emergency call, family members intent on securing the home during a gun owner’s illness, or an executor for the deceased owner’s estate. Without a combination, they can’t unload the gun to make it safe. (Just wait until a cop needs to unload a locked gun and can’t get the combo from a suspect he just arrested!)
It grants an exemption so police can buy guns that are deemed unsafe for citizens.
- Citizens will be responsible for testing integrated gun locks until they’re safe enough for police. Yet in some recent years, the only children to die in gun accidents were cop kids. Apparently cop kids don’t count.
It grants an expanded exemption for Beretta Corp to sell these ‘unsafe’ guns out of state.
- Glendening promoted gun lock mandates to ‘protect children.’ But at the same time he banned new sale of most handguns as being unsafe, he gave one company expanded protection to traffic in such guns out of state.
- A company in the Senate President’s home district is more important than ‘just saving one life." In a choice between protecting kids in other states or protecting commerce, leadership took the cash.
It violates a referendum of the people.
- In 1988, Maryland voters spoke on the issue of handgun sales, by sustaining HB 1131 (the "Saturday Night Special" ban) in referendum. Since then, the only guns legal for sale in Maryland have been those specifically approved by the Handgun Roster Board.
- When leadership rammed this ban down our throats, we complained that such a system would be open to political manipulation. In response, leadership helped sell the bill by declaring that no guns approved would ever be retroactively unapproved.
- Now in SB 211, we will have models of guns lawfully approved by the Roster Board become illegal for sale … exactly as activists warned in 1988.
It mandates minimum sentences of jail time for possessing a gun unlawfully.
- Judicial discretion in gun cases is removed, and the administration is given new mandates for cracking down on gun ownership (instead of predatory crime.)
- Maryland will jail people for fear of what they might do with a gun in the future, when it refused to jail those same people for the offense which disqualified them from gun ownership in the first place.
It creates a Ceasefire Council to guide efforts to impede private firearms ownership.
- Rather than have to park shills on lines in various agencies, this Council will let Glendening consolidate and fund anti-gun projects directly.