(January 7, 2002) Just as we both feared and predicted, January 1, 2002, brought the new restriction on your purchase of a regulated firearm without the lawful availability of classes needed to satisfy the training mandate. Though a reduced version of the class is available at a few dealer shops, safety training offered by the state is notable chiefly by its absence.

The issue is one of the strongest we've ever been given for connecting with voters from all walks of life. In this election year especially, gunowners should make a point of broadcasting facts of this training fiasco. This brush can tar the integrity of every legislator who voted for Glendening's gun control package, because the state has yet to translate a gun control law into improved public safety. Tell your neighbors and friends what political folly this has become. If you discredit public officials on this issue then you call into question their handling of other gun control measures as well, ones that may be harder to explain in short sound bites. This one is simple to explain: in order to exercise your right to buy a gun you must take a class the state makes artificially difficult to find.

We need broad awareness of our concerns, so to help you reach those around you - neighbors, newspaper editors, and especially legislators - here are some inescapable truths about the training mandate now in effect:

1. The state's safety instruction system was to have been in place by January 1, 2001 … a full year ago. [Article 41, section 4-201, as amended by SB 211 in 2000.] Yet training is still not available in some parts of the state, and may not be for many weeks. There is no apparent plan to provide for prospective handgun buyers in Baltimore City at all. Buyers in Western Maryland or some parts of Eastern Shore should plan on up to 90 minute drives to get to a class, made available with limited seating, first come first served.

2. The state fought in court not to offer safety classes as required by state law. [Purtilo v. Maryland Police Training Commission, Case 221610-V, Montgomery County Circuit Court.]

3. The state argued in court there is no safety loss in not taking its class. It said the value of its class is solely one of satisfying an administrative requirement. If there were safety merit to the class then I would have been harmed by not being given a class that was my right to take. When gun advocates say this issue is about bureaucracy instead of safety, we are only restating the states own position taken in court.

4. The state class is a 40 minute video. Its contents are chiefly recitations of statute. It tells you repeatedly that to learn safe gun handling you must take a real safety class from someone else. You never see a firearm discharged. Ever. You never see even a picture of a long gun, though the law applies to some you might want to buy. Sorry, no translation service for Spanish-speakers or others not comfortable in English.

5. State announcements (such as they are) say you will be arrested and prosecuted if you bring a firearm or related gear to its class. Not only is there no gun at the state gun safety class, but you will be charged with a crime if you bring one. Pity the soul who bought a gun last year and naively wants a trooper to show him how to make it safe!

6. The state video prominently advertises the Brady Campaign (formerly Handgun Control, Inc.) and other anti-gun advocacy groups (not safety groups) while citing Brady Bunch propaganda as if scientific statistics.

7. Other groups may apply to offer either the state's class or their own. That in fact is what the state wants: all the barriers to ownership without having to go through the motions of teaching. Those who act as agents of the state must do so knowing they are on the hook for liability. The state indicates it will not indemnify any who teach on its behalf. If a former student sues following some hurt, then you or your club, not the state, pay the bills.

You can tell if a law works by measuring how well it solves a problem. Glendening's training mandate can never be a safety success because its purpose is purely political. There was no problem to solve. No politician can ever proclaim a reduction in accident rates, because people weren't being hurt for lack of training before the law took effect. (Of course, some liberals delight in claiming credit for solving problems that never existed, so we'll see.)