(2-14-2003) The race to enact new gun control is on, and - exactly as we predicted in our post-election report - anti-gunners came out of the blocks fast to steer hard-left. The gamesmanship is clear. First they wrote campaign ads intended to appeal to their base, then they drafted bills to fit their spin. What do they really want? Gun control on Ehrlich's desk. He either signs it (giving them what they want) or vetos it (giving them campaign rhetoric.)
I'd love to report how our broadened base of pro-gun legislators, many freshly re-elected with our community's help, are fighting back. I can't. For the most part, our bills aren't there. In fact as of the first deadline for bills to be submitted, no substantive pro-gun legislation was in the hopper. There is something of a mess in Annapolis, and we have our work cut out for us cleaning it up. Here is what you need to know, starting with the anti-gun bills:
New ballistic profiling proposal leads anti-gun agenda. Gun grabbers led this year's gun control push with a bill to expand ballistic fingerprinting to all firearms. No firearm will be lawful for sale unless the manufacturer provides a shell case for MSP's evidence database. This will gut long gun sales just as it did for handguns, since companies can't afford to make MD-only products, and they're terrified of our oppressive regulatory environment.
Know the track record. Ballistic fingerprinting has been a mandate on handgun sales for three years, has cost more than five million tax dollars yet has solved no crimes. Glendening got this mandate under a claim it would yield "immediate results." Now we know the system couldn't have been expected to work in the first place, as revealed by multiple independent scientific studies commissioned in California as response to their legislature's demand that it be considered. They confirm it couldn't work. Ballistic fingerprinting is too whacky even for California!
[The 'sniper' investigation demonstrated just how badly this technology fails. The FBI owns the software just as in Maryland, and they already use it to store all ballistic evidence discovered at crime scenes nationally. Yet the snipers' nationwide crime spree was not discovered until after they were in custody and their weapon analyzed in the lab. The ballistic fingerprinting software failed to alert investigators to the potential that a serial shooter was working his way across the country. Now legislators want to bury crime evidence even further under a mountain of non-crime evidence. The biggest problem with this proposal is that it diverts resources away from real public safety programs that work. Legislators backing new gun control made sure that expansion of a failed measure was their first bill submitted. That way everyone would know their real goal is to put a thumb in our eye. ]
Also submitted is a new ban on so-called "assault weapons" to close "loopholes" in existing law. (You and I both know what a loophole is to anti-gunners: if we can still get guns, then there must be a loophole.) Another bill gets tough with gun owners whose property is stolen - it will be a crime not to report it according to state standards.
Gunowner grievances get no redress this session. The situation is frustrating. During the campaign, Ehrlich's staff was disciplined to remain single-mindedly 'on-issue' (that is, not allow others to divert attention to an agenda of the opponent.) Those becoming part of the new administration retained this discipline, and have a fixed agenda in mind for the session. Generally this is a good thing! When staff members deal with an 'off-issue' matter immediately and ruthlessly, the boss can focus on priorities of his own choosing. Our problem? Pro-gun issues aren't one of those priorities, so we have become one of the off-issue matters that zealous staff operatives quash by leveraging the power of the governor's office. They crushed legislators' attempts to advance pro-gun bills.
A spokesman in the Governor's Press Office said on the record only that it is up to legislators to decide what bills they want to submit. However, we have learned that Joe Getty, formerly a pro-gun delegate from Carroll County and now a policy czar for Ehrlich, has strong-armed Republican legislators not to submit gun bills, as has Delegate Carmen Amedori. Once a champion of pro-gun bills, Amedori is now on the record as having flipped her position on the value of submitting gun bills to counter left wingers' ideas. Party concerns have overtaken issues, and they all want a "dynasty." We'd like one too - if it fixes problems. There are matters best addressed administratively, and in fact we withheld publication of our present newsletter for a month past deadline in hopes of finding some better sign before printing hard news, but the best we can report for the moment is that the plan is no gun plan.
The climate for pro-gun bills coming from our friends in the Democratic majority was chilled for the same reason. The ball is in the administration's court. If conservatives in the GOP camp won't push a gun bill, why should pro-gun D's needlessly pay the political cost for a proposal lacking top cover? We give pro-gun D's a pass on this one.
The story isn't entirely gloomy. Very late in the game some "upstarts" - chiefly freshmen Republicans who became disillusioned with the efforts of Amedori and others to quash issues of interest to their constituents - did submit proposals to repeal ballistic fingerprinting and the 'gun lock' ban. Huzzah!! Without top cover from the administration, these bills stand the proverbial snowball's chance, but we owe it to our friends to show maximum support (and appreciation) for their efforts. Maybe then the others will remember who voted them too.
The one way guns are on the administration radar screen is bad. They call their intiative Project Exile, after the Richmond project. It is another hold-over from the campaign and its reality is very different than the spin. We oppose it - you will too once you get its details. Unfortunately the Exile bills will become increasingly important to staff members, because other initiatives are in jepardy (e.g., slots) and they need some win in the first year. They know that if legislative leadership won't give Ehrlich anything else, they'll give him more gun control.
The bill expands state restrictions on who is barred from possessing a gun (this is called a "disability") at the same time it stiffens penalties for people caught possessing a gun after becoming disabled. At the end of the day this bill becomes law, more people will be gun criminals than started the day, many without realizing it and with no link to violent crime. It is really a 'reverse Exile' bill that will let gun grabbers bring more people into state courts on gun crimes. (The Richmond Exile got its name for sending real criminals away to federal courts.)
We applaud the administration's goal of reducing violent crime. Sadly, this bill won't have that effect at all, and in fact will only serve gun grabbers. The bill is based on possession of a gun by someone with a technical disability, not misuse of a gun by a thug. In fact, if you look at Attorney General Joe Curran's Farewell to Arms in which he spells out how to totally ban guns in Maryland, you find just this proposal (minus the name.)
How in the world could this happen? Isn't Ehrlich generally pro gun? We'd like to think so. Our guess: staffers are preoccupied with budget, so when it came time to draft a bill for Bob's 'tough on crime' campaign promise, someone who understands neither gun law nor its practical application grabbed bad bill language left over from anti-gun initiatives and didn't pay attention to what came out of the word processor. Shoddy drafting is no excuse, but it is the most benign explanation we can think of. And that the bill reflects sloppy lawyering is plain, since it asserts provisions that are blatantly unsupportable under other state law (as will emerge at the hearings.)
The political problem this raises is perhaps the most far reaching. At the same time staffers quashed pro-gun bills, they signed up legislators to co-sponsor their Exile bill. Virtually the entire GOP caucus in each house is party to it - putting most on record as hypocrites. They once railed against new Glendening gun control laws but now seek to both expand those laws and increase penalties for people who break them! Opponents intent on unseating these legislators in 2006 will have an easy time documenting inconsistent positions, and it will be very difficult for us to convince gun owners to invest maximum effort on behalf of people who armed anti-gunners with a bigger club to use on us. Most legislators signed without reading the bill, simply because it was the Ehrlich plan. We don't fault them for that. Many we have talked with are privately horrified to discover what it is they now have their name on.
Conservatives lament big government's prosecutorial and regulatory power to ruin people who are guilty of no crime. Through a so-called Exile proposal, our friends are now on the side of expanded government. What a mess.
What are prospects for administrative instead of legislative relief? Unknown. Our situation depends greatly on decisions implemented by the Superintendent of State Police, who statutorially heads several of the key boards (e.g., the Handgun Roster Board.) Ehrlich's nominee to replace David Mitchell is Ed Norris, until recently Mayor Martin O'Malley's police commissioner in Baltimore. His confirmation hearing was the only real opportunity for legislators to investigate what he believes. (In fact, for just that reason Baltimore legislators delayed confirmation in order to explore Norris' views on racial profiling.) Days before the hearing, a GOP staff member contacted us and warned Tripwire to "back off" editorials agitating about gun matters (as we do all the time.) We nevertheless circulated a list of questions the community might like asked of Norris. Most remain unanswered. Staffers reached the committee to quash further public questioning about guns.
The hearing was not a total loss. A spokesman for the Maryland Troopers Association speaking in favor of Norris thanked Ehrlich for consulting with them on Norris' selection. In contrast, gun owners were simply told who is to be in charge of enforcing gun laws, without a chance to ask what he thinks about the 'legality lock' ban or what it means to be a "qualified applicant" for a carry permit. The confirmation hearing was not a loss since we learned someone in the statehouse thinks more troopers than gun owners voted in November.