(December 6, 1999) Remember Parris Glendening's Gun Violence Act of 1996? He and Maryland State Police poured on the pork for their law that allows a judge to totally disarm someone who is involved in domestic squabbles. It doesn't matter if that person hasn't ever been charged with a crime. When one party asks the judge, everyone can be disarmed.

Please pay attention to how seriously they take this law. A judge's order is supposed to be logged into a computer, so the parties will not be approved for purchase of a firearm. But as is emerging, a significant number of orders are never entered; others are entered with bogus information, making them useless for the ostensible purpose.

How big is the problem? In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Superintendent David B. Mitchell of the Maryland State Police stated: "The fact of the matter is, I don't know how big the backlog is."

Hearings are the latest development in this unfolding story. The administration is scrambling to place damage behind them quickly in order to refocus attention on Glendening's new gun control proposals. That's why you're seeing this now rather than during session. Speaking off the record, aids concede they want this to be 'old news' before January, rather than allow failure of their 1996 suite of controls to overshadow their next legislative objectives.

We don't for a second believe this or any gun control law stops crime, but Glendening made a big deal of buying this legislation in 96, so you'd think he would at least bother to use it. Yet people against whom a judge has issued such a protective order continue to get guns, and they continue to do crime ... and victims continue to die. Victims like the children of Richard Spicknall, who were killed by their father with a handgun he bought with State Police approval, even though he was under one of Glendening's 1996 Gun Violence Act restrictions.

The same people who don't use the old laws are the ones tasked by Glendening to get more gun control. People like Superintendent Mitchell, whose testimony before the House came within a day of marshalling his 'Glendening Gun' Task Force to issue its draconian recommendations. Or people like Allegany County Sheriff David Goad, the Task Force member who commented on his own office's mishandling of protective orders, saying: "We are putting these in off the seat of our pants, as best we can." That can't sound any better to the Spicknall family than it does to us.

In any other universe we'd wonder: Why are these shills in town begging more gun control instead of doing their job with what Parris bought them last time around? But this is Maryland. Questions we already know the answer to we don't need to ask. This isn't about safety. It's about control.