We already knew the fate of most legislation when the General Assembly adjourned in April, and that was the good news we reported at the time: all sweeping gun bills – including the so-called ‘assault weapon' ban – were dead for the year. However it wasn't until the 16th of May that we knew the final outcome for all gun bills. Just before the last bill-signing ceremony for approved legislation, Governor Martin O'Malley vetoed SB 497 – a modest gun bill that passed both houses without fanfare or opposition.
It was a simple proposal. SB 497 would have allowed police departments to sell firearms to gun manufacturers. Now, who in the world would think law enforcement agencies would need permission to do that? Anyone familiar with the Gun Safety Act (GSA) of 2000, that's who. The deceptively titled GSA was Gov. Glendening 's omnibus package of anti-gun demagoguery, and among its many provisions is a mandate to destroy all firearms owned by police but no longer in use. Proponents portrayed it as necessary to prevent firearms from somehow making their way into criminal hands – sort of a death penalty for guns. What they overlooked – not that we didn't suggest amendments at the time– was that departments sell both forfeited property and used gear as a source of revenue. The GSA bans them from selling any guns, even those that had been purchased for issue to officers. When gear needed an upgrade, what used to happen was the department would trade in old guns for credit towards new sidearms. What happens today is the department must pay to destroy its old guns, then pay top dollar to buy the new gear.
SB 497 would have allowed police to trade in gear to gun manufacturers in order to stretch their budget and save tax payers some expense. O'Malley's veto keeps it business as usual in the post-Glendening world. (Gun manufacturers don't care – they simply keep making new products to satisfy market demand, and don't mind if cops pay retail. Taxpayers will keep paying to melt perfectly good property owned on our behalf. The state – as O'Malley promised in his veto message – will keep collecting extra taxes for distribution to police departments to pay the difference.) This represents the second near miss on repeal of some piece of the Gun Safety Act, the first being the 2005 effort to repeal ballistic fingerprinting. (Unlike in 2005, Delegate Dwyer 's role wasn't critical, so SB 497 got further.)
The veto is no real surprise. Gov. O'Malley supported present policy while Mayor of Baltimore, so his opposition to changing it now is more about his maintaining consistency in application of policy than sending any particular gun message. The more interesting question is: why would rabidly anti-gun legislators – many who voted for the restriction in the first place – vote its repeal? One likely answer is culture . A rich Annapolis tradition is that when the climate favors passage of some issue's legislation, then each side can get a little bit of something. Legislators can cast a blind eye to some low-profile measure they might have opposed if something they support, of commensurate scale, advances too. While usually not an explicit trade, the books often balance.
And that leads us to SB 35, another minor bill that passed both houses without fanfare or opposition. Its title is not illuminating: “Transportation – Highways – Federal Property” but it is a gun bill. Highly technical, it changes the definition of what constitutes a ‘state road' in Maryland. Many state laws are defined in terms of behavior which is proscribed on ‘state roads', e.g., driving on a revoked license and – of interest here – carrying a handgun without a permit. In the last two years, state prosecutors lost a very small number of cases involving gun transport, because the charges were brought against people driving on closed federal reservations. (For example, an interstate truck driver making a delivery at Andrews Air Force Base was found to have a gun in his cab. Police charged him under the state law but ultimately the driver won on appeal, because the location where he was found with a gun was not a state road under the law's definition. It was on a closed federal reservation.) SB 35 brings more roads into the scope of state law. Everyone who voted for this bill supported expanding the scope of state gun laws. Federal reservations at Aberdeen, Beltsville and more are affected. (It wasn't like there were no gun laws in these areas – federal restrictions have applied all along, and the lost prosecutions mentioned above simply came from officials' bringing charges in the wrong court. Now, prosecutors get two bites at the apple – once at the state level and once federally.)
Governor O'Malley signed SB 35 into law on April 24 th . (Obviously the culture of balancing books is restricted to the General Assembly.) Sources in the administration candidly opine that SB 497 was vetoed as much because of sponsor problems as policy. ( Senator Larry Haines , one of our pro-gun friends, was chief in the list of GOP-only sponsors of SB 497. On the other hand, SB 35 was promoted by Senator Brian Frosh – Montgomery County gun grabber, Democrat and chair of the Judicial Proceedings Committee.) Lessons? Once again we are reminded that pro-gun activists need a bi-partisan and balanced portfolio of friends in order to succeed in Annapolis; the GOP strategists who think their party by itself can promote even minor policy changes involving firearms should think again. Next, we should always have a plan for taking a bill the distance – don't just toss it in the hopper to see what happens. Finally, as always: the cost of repealing even the most modest gun control measure is exorbitantly high.
And all the rest … Montgomery County legislators proposed to exempt their county from state gun laws, in effect gutting the state preemption. (Presently the state reserves unto itself the right to regulate firearms, which prevents the growth of a patchwork quilt of conflicting rules to snare the unwary.) The left wing's fringe also promoted taxes on both “assault weapons” (a shameless attempt to get that definition in law by other means, so it could later be banned) and ammunition – rather, whatever ammo would still be lawful for sale after all existing and conventional products had been banned. (Only individually serial-numbered cartridges could be sold. The tax would be to pay for new bureaucracy to track and register each bullet.) All these proposals died.
A “castle bill”, SB 518, was introduced by Senator Nancy Jacobs , to give someone freedom from liability (both civil and criminal) in use of deadly (and non-deadly) force in a broad array of circumstances. ( Delegate William Frank introduced a House crossfile.) It was a politically aggressive idea – some would say too aggressive – and went nowhere accordingly. In years past, more modest forms of the bill, such as focusing on protection in the home, showed promise. (One passed in one house and was advancing in the other when time ran out.) Some observers thought it would have been a better strategy to lock in protections for unequivocal situations before introducing a broad bill that would have defended use of force against someone walking a dog on your lawn. (That won't resonate in a lot of districts.) The measure is now branded as one that is only intended for posturing to a conservative base.
Senator Robert Hooper continued to invite people to wonder just what is in his head, with introduction of a bill to mandate that all health care workers report to police any injury they think might have involved a firearm. (More than one county already has this requirement.) The bill was quietly amended into a study (with report for next year) before it was cheerfully passed by a legislature that is largely happy to increase government rules involving guns.
Right to carry legislation was also introduced by Hooper, whose incompetent handling of the issue trained a new crop of freshman legislators to view carry as an out-of-the-mainstream idea to be ignored when session gets busy. (More posturing to a conservative base, and all that.) The bill could not have advanced this year, but the day it can pass got further off. Delegate Dan Riley introduced a different version of the bill in the House, further telegraphing weakness to any who cared to notice (signaling that the community is unable to agree on what it wants.) Riley's involvement was surprising. In a candidate questionnaire last fall, he indicated that ordinary citizens can't be trained to carry a firearm in public and that firearm ownership is appropriate only in rural areas. A misunderstanding in the survey? Playing it both ways? It largely doesn't matter since the goalposts have moved further back.
The usual cast of characters begged for gun control. Doug Gansler and Peter Franchot p ut their respective state offices behind a pitch for gun bans. Prince George's County Government, Baltimore Mayor Dixon , the Chiefs of Police Association and League of Women Voters all appeared. So too did the usual assortment of faith-based groups: Maryland Catholic Conference, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, Presbytery of Baltimore. (Remember what your tithe supports next time they pass the plate.)