Maryland is one of the more anti-gun states in the nation, and part of that is likely attributed to the beltway crowd that infests the suburbs of D.C. A while back, the state passed a law that would basically create a roster of permissible handguns that residents could lawfully purchase.
Now, a new bill has been introduced to revamp this particular flavor of stupidity.
In short, it boils down to creating more bureaucracy to make it look like the state's infringement on a civil liberty is really just a measured response to so-called gun violence:
Following The Baltimore Sun’s reporting on the state’s handgun roster board, two bills are set to be introduced in the Maryland legislature that would revamp the way the board works, adding what advocates of the bills say are structure and guidance to the process of deciding which guns can be bought and sold in the state.
A Second Amendment supporter, however, sharply criticized the bills as unnecessary.
“All it does is add a layer of bureaucracy … to a process that already takes many months,” said Second Amendment advocacy organization Maryland Shall Issue President Mark Pennak.
“This is a solution in search of a problem.”
Sponsored in the house by Baltimore City Del. Elizabeth Embry and in the senate by Montgomery County Sen. Jeff Waldstreicher, both Democrats, the bills would restructure the state’s handgun roster board, a group of governor-appointed citizens who determine whether a gun makes the state’s “roster,” a list of guns Marylanders can purchase or sell.
The bill would provide “more guidance to the board, structure to safety testing, how often someone can apply, how to interpret safety testing [and] if it fails, what that should mean,” Embry said in an interview. And, she argued, the changes would improve the safety of her constituents.
“Gun violence is one of the biggest public safety and public health issues in Baltimore City,” she said. “We’ve seen amazing improvements but we have a long way to go in terms of gun safety. Having the handgun roster board live up to its potential … that can only help protect the citizens of Baltimore.”
Of course, it seems that part of the problem is that the board itself took its job seriously, at least with regard to testing, and approved somewhere around 95 percent of the firearms put before it. Basically, if it worked like it was supposed to, they approved it. Then again, since the board was supposed to be evaluating the safety of the firearms, that's pretty much what they were supposed to do.
However, what no one in Maryland seems to get is that handgun rosters don't actually stop bad people from getting guns. At best, it simply restricts them to having approved guns, but since they're not obtaining them lawfully, they're also not going to restrict themselves to the guns that the state has given the green light to. It's just not going to happen.
All this will do is simply add "structure" to a system that's intended to keep guns out of citizens' hands, but didn't because it was presented as "safety testing" as opposed to anything else.
So, now they're trying to "fix" it so numerous popular firearms will get rejected by the board and Maryland residents will be stuck with an ever-dwindling supply of firearms available to them, as we see happening in California.
No one will be safer.
We're all dumber for having had to watch this crap, though.