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Endangering the RKBA in Maryland
It was Mark Twain who observed that no one's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session. Alas, that is more true than ever, especially in Maryland.
While most of the other 49 states are enacting sensible legislation that recognizes a citizen's right to defend his person, family and property, here in Maryland things are moving in the opposite direction. Our governor (may he rot in Hell) has expressed the intent to abolish the death penalty for criminals here. At the same time, he is doing nothing about the death penalty so often imposed upon crime victims.
Worse still the National Rifle Association of America, although hated by many as an extremist organization devoted to encouraging wholesale bloodletting in our cities, has badly dropped the ball here in Maryland. NRA's political arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, periodically emails a briefing on the status of legislation, nationally and state-by-state. The Association has become so intent upon money-raising to perpetuate itself that it has taken to skewing these news briefs, and the latest one is a prime example.
Friday, Maryland NRA members received an e-mail with the breathless title "Maryland House of Delegates to Consider Four Pro-Gun Bills!" The little fly in the ointment is that one of these four bills is not "pro-gun." In fact, it's not a paranoid delusion to imagine how it can be used as a further means of oppressing legal firearms owners. And worse still, the NRA news releases have completely ignored a handful of egregiously anti-gun bills in the hopper.
Start with the bill NRA-ILA promotes as "pro-gun", HB-1061. This bill would "require the Secretary of Police to refund the application fee for a permit to carry, wear, or transport a handgun to an applicant whose application is denied. Because Maryland is a 'may-issue' state, the police are not required to give law-abiding citizens a permit to carry, yet under current law people are not allowed to recover their denied application fees."
The NRA news release completely ignores the existence of HB-2, which would turn Maryland into a "shall-issue" state. This is the holy grail of the pro self-defense community. Instead, NRA thinks we should congratulate ourselves if we persuade the authorities to refund our application fee when they arbitrarily deny a concealed-carry permit. Not only is that ridiculous, I do not think it's paranoia to consider 1061 a back-door registration scheme, or worse.
Consider the following scenario:
Many pro-RKBA activists have been urging Marylanders to apply for a CCW permit, knowing it is likely to be denied. The rationale behind this is sound: at the moment, the Maryland State Police report that they deny relatively few permits. This is because the average gun owner knows he's not going to get a permit, and has enough sense not to waste the application fee, which runs more than $100. If this refund-upon-denial law passes in the absence of a shall-issue provision (HB-2) the number of permit applications is likely to increase exponentially. And while that may prove the activists' point about the difficulty of obtaining a permit in Maryland, it will provide a bigger data bonanza for the state government.
As far as I know, there is nothing prohibiting the MSP from maintaining a list of people who have applied for and been denied handgun permits. The police departments already have at their disposal a little-known tool called the "M-Gun" database. Adding to the database the names of those who unsuccessfully apply for a permit, provides the police a handy list of people whom they might suspect of carrying a concealed firearm without the permit. M-Gun is available on the in-car computers of police officers. Once your driving license information has been entered, a few more key strokes provide access to information about the guns you own and whether or not you have a CCW permit. (Just how much information it provides is a closely guarded secret.)
Now imagine this: you are pulled over for a burnt-out tail light. In the process of checking to make sure you are the legal owner of the vehicle, the cop sees that you applied for a CCW permit but were denied. Now he has "probable cause," or at least "reasonable suspicion" (which is the reduced standard they are now using) to search your vehicle and person, figuring you are packing without a permit. Whether or not you are in possession of a firearm at that moment, you will have been subjected to a search that was hitherto not permitted. In short, one more bit of freedom and privacy down the dumper.
And there are yet other anti-self-defensebills in the hopper. There's HB-108, which would prohibit the possession of an "electronic weapon." If you're näive enough to think that would simply prevent "civilians" from owning Tasers and stun guns, think again. Once such a law is on the books, anything, including a loud battery-powered noisemaker, could be added to the list of prohibited electronic weapons.
There's HB-640, which would require anyone placed under a temporary restraining order to surrender any firearms he or she owns. Aside from the obvious problem this creates for the subject to re-acquire his guns at some future date, it does nothing to protect the potential victim from attack by knife, automobile, blunt instrument, incendiary device, poison, or an endless list of other readily available means.
HB-655 would deny youth hunting licenses to people under the age of 13, thus depriving parents of the opportunity to pass along this sporting tradition to their children at the earliest practicable age.
But the worst of all the bills ignored by NRA-ILA is HB-517, the "encoded ammunition" law. Among the provisions of this bill are requiring each shell casing and bullet base to be stamped with an "indelible" serial number that can be traced, requiring all non "encoded" ammunition to be destroyed or surrendered by a certain date, and imposing a tax of 5 cents per round on the "encoded" ammo, assuming that any manufacturer is willing to produce such stuff, and without regard to the increased cost of producing this ammo, which will be passed on to the consumer.
Now, if you are a recreational shooter, this tax becomes a big burden. Cowboy Action shooters, for example, may attend two, or even three matches each weekend. The average cowboy match consists of six stages, in the course of which about 120 rounds of this more expensive ammo is used. So, without even considering how much Winchester, Remington or CCI is going to sock you at retail, every time you take those cowboy guns out of their cases to use them, it's going to cost you six dollars more than it does now. For an active cowboy shooter, the tax alone will add up to $500 a year or more.
Even this isn't the entire story about the 2008 legislative session in Maryland, but in the interest of (relative) brevity, it should be enough to frighten you into action.
First order of business: log on to the Maryland Shall Issue web site for a comprehensive look at what the lawmakers are trying to do to us. If you have more time on your hands, have a look at the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership web site, or that of Gun Owners of America, to gain a perspective on the way the NRA is neglecting its members in Maryland, which we still jokingly call The Free State.