The Maryland General Assembly is marching in lockstep with these forces, and it is committed to making this the year when citizens lose their hard-fought liberties.
Already the so-called Gun Safety Act of 2023 is barreling through the legislature, and its second hearing set for Feb. 7. The act was the first measure of the new year and thus earned the designation SB 0001 — which should tell the law-abiding public just how intent certain lawmakers are to rip their rights away from them.
The highly controversial proposal is sponsored by Sen. Jeff Waldstreicher and then-Sen. Susan Lee, both of Montgomery. Lee recently became Maryland’s Secretary of State.
The draconian measure would bar an individual from wearing, carrying, or transporting a firearm onto another person’s property without their prior consent.
Further it would prohibit anyone from wearing, carrying, or transporting a firearm within 100 feet of a wide variety of places in the state. These include public accommodations designated as “sensitive” places such as restaurants, lodging areas, stadiums, and retail stores.
In other words, large portions of the state become a virtual no-go zone for legal concealed carry.
Waldstreicher noted that the Supreme Court’s NYSRPA v. Bruen (2022) decision dealt a fatal blow to the state’s previous sweeping regulations on concealed carry. A majority of the high court agreed that legal gun owners may not be forced to show a “good and substantial” reason to concealed carry.
Justices struck down New York’s “proper cause to carry” requirement and in doing so eliminated those in Maryland and other states. The majority ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment made the burdensome regulations unconstitutional.
As Waldstreicher said, Maryland’s “good and substantial” reason requirement flew out of the window when the justices upheld the supremacy of the Second Amendment in the New York case.
“By eliminating that requirement,” he explained, “now anyone can get a gun and bring it anywhere. That is unacceptable and creates a tremendous danger in our state…It has forced our hand here in the legislature, and we need to act.”
Of course, the state’s original attempt to persuade criminals not to murder innocent civilians and each other — the Firearms Safety Act of 2013 — did not stop Baltimore from becoming one of the murder capitals of the U.S.
That measure banned “assault weapons” along with high-capacity magazines, and it enacted fingerprinting and reporting protocols on handgun purchases. Even so, at times in the decade since its passage, Baltimore’s murder rate ranked more than double that of even Chicago’s.
Maryland saw a dramatic upswing in handgun permit applications after the Bruen decision. State police for the three years prior to the ruling reportedly approved an average of 13,000 to 14,000 of these applications per year. But in the roughly six months after the proper cause requirement was overturned, that number skyrocketed to over 80,000.
Despite what anti-gun crusaders want you to believe, the simple fact is that legal gun owners commit very few crimes. And as for criminals, they do not care in the slightest what the Maryland legislature says they can and cannot do.
Mark Pennak, president of Maryland gun rights group Maryland Shall Issue, declared that the wave of new bills “would adversely affect the rights of concealed carry permit holders to be able to protect themselves.” He rightly added that the sweeping statutes “will have no effect on actually promoting public safety.”
Why? Again, because “permit holders do not commit crimes.”
