(August 21, 2001) On August 21 our lawsuit against the state concerning firearm safety classes was heard by Judge Pincus in Montgomery County Circuit court. After argument on both sides, Pincus granted the state's motion to dismiss the matter.

Last year's Gun Safety Act makes a state firearms safety training a mandatory prerequisite to buying a handgun in Maryland. The restriction begins next year; by law the state was to adopt reguations for how to begin training by the first of this year. We had filed suit when, five months after their own deadline, they were not anywhere near adopting regs, much less giving classes.

Tuesday's ruling settles the narrow question of whether we are entitled to take the safety class according to regs the law says had to be in place by 1 January 2001: We are NOT now entitled to the class; it will be offered only when (or if) the state, in its own discretion, elects to give it. The judge refused to declare the date at which any statutory obligation would apply to the state.

Still, some effects from our suit are plain, as evidenced by the record we exposed during discovery. The state was doing little about its obligation to adopt regulations. It took until November of 2000 for the commission to approve a draft of the regs for publication; those regs sat unchanged until June of this year -- AFTER we filed suit -- before being officially published in the Register (the first official step towards adoption.)

In contrast, the very same people were ultimately responsible for advancing four other regulatory changes resulting from the very same Gun Safety Act. One example of this is the "ballistic fingerprint" mandate. In all of those cases, officials published emergency regs so they could begin applying the law IMMEDIATELY. What's the difference? THOSE regulations all had to do with ways police could STOP you from getting a gun; but the training regs have to do with ways to HELP you get a gun in the future. Obviously this administration is only interested in stopping you from buying guns.

Our suit caught the state with its pants down. Once we exposed what was (not) going on, the record shows their entire game plan changed. Any sense of a real safety course was abandoned in favor of a cheap video tape presentation. Their legal strategy was to slap anything together fast, then repaint history to make it look like they were working hard all along, in order to minimize their personal exposure. It's too bad that the judge thought they'd caught up enough that our mandamous was not needed.

But for the most important point out of all this, look very closely at what the judge decided. Pincus dismissed the suit because I do not have standing to bring action, specifically: THERE IS NO HARM TO NOT BEING ABLE TO TAKE THE SAFETY CLASS AT THIS TIME. The judge ruled that the only harm would be if someone could not buy a handgun later for want of the class.

Back when we testified against this legislation before the General Assembly, we said this law would only be about bureaucratic barriers to gun ownership, not about safety. Today, the judge agreed.

So there you have it. This law is only about erecting bureaucratic hurdles to gun ownership, not safety. The next time someone tries to tell you that the Glendening/Kennedy machine is interested in public safety, you can yell BULL.

Tell them about how WE were the ones who sued trying to TAKE a safety class, that the state successfully avoided having to give.