Maryland

I say "responds" because they aren't able to move out of Maryland at the signature of a gun control law, but they will be looking at other states where they can expand production. (UPDATE: More details here)

On the one hand, it's good for industries to move to states that will appreciate them rather than regulate them out of existence.  On the other hand, each state we abandon to the anti-gun forces of darkness -- each state that loses its positive gun culture -- is most likely permanently lost, and that too has consequences.

The state-level gun control push that the Obama administration has been engaged in following the failure of its national agenda is going to -- in fact, already has -- resulted in many court challenges on Second Amendment and other grounds.  We have a narrow majority on the Supreme Court, and we have been slowly using the court system to expand gun rights into traditionally anti-gun states. 

Take, for example, Illinois -- the last state in the nation to have no concealed carry laws at all.  Their complete ban on self-defense was struck down by the federal courts.  Their state legislature has been struggling to find a law that will pass both political and Constitutional muster.  That's a tremendous opening to bring the gun culture back to Illinois, but it will come to little if gun owners cannot become a political force there. 

Our advantage in the courts will be short-lived if Democrats can drive us out of enough blue states to make winning national elections impossible.  We're already at risk if Obama has the chance to replace any of the Heller 5. 

We need to be cautious about cheering companies leaving states that fall to the enemy.  Yes, moving manufacturers out of an anti-gun state can punish that state economically for passing gun control, and that threat can help us politically elsewhere.  But make no mistake, it is still a retreat, and it costs us influence in the states we abandon.

They said they would leave if legislators passed gun control laws.  The legislature did, and Beretta has now announced that they are in fact leaving the state. 

Remember to contact your Senators, folks.  If national gun control legislation passes, gun companies won't be able to pick up and move to a free state quite so easily.

The case is Woollard v Gallagher.  Volokh has some analysis.

Losing this case is not a disaster; there are still appeals and we have been winning the shall-issue fight in the legislature.  Maryland is one of the few holdouts.

Right now in Annapolis, state legislators are considering amendments to Senate Bill 281, Governor Martin O'Malley's deceptive and far-reaching attack on your right to self-defense. A recent Susquehanna poll found that by a margin of 3-to-1, Maryland voters prefer that the legislature focus on the identification and treatment of mental health issues, rather than banning common semi-auto rifles. Yet the Governor persists. He continues to tilt at windmills.

Time is of the essence: a vote could occur at any time and the list of horrible anti-gun amendments is long.

Find out what you can do to help.

Pass gun control, lose jobs. 

Following the passage of a draconian gun control law in 1998, legal gun licenses went from 1.5 million to under 200,000. 

Since 1998, gun crime in Massachusetts has gotten worse, not better. In 2011, Massachusetts recorded 122 murders committed with firearms, the Globe reported this month -- a striking increase from the 65 in 1998. Other crimes rose too. Between 1998 and 2011, robbery with firearms climbed 20.7 percent. Aggravated assaults jumped 26.7 percent.

Gun control is not about crime. It's about control.

Chris at Armaborealis has a contact tool for Maryland legislators and a sample letter.

University of Maryland, College Park president Wallace Loh has endorsed state legislative efforts to limit gun ownership, following an apparent murder-suicide this month involving students at the school.

I would have expected a university president to understand that you don't make policy based on anecdotes.

Senate Bill 281, O'malley's Disenfranchisement bill, will be voted on Thursday by the Senate Judiciary Committee. We have a chance to stop this bill, but we need to make phone calls and visits to Annapolis Wednesday and Thursday. We need YOU! We NEED visits to Annapolis.

Maryland Shall Issue needs you to contact your state senators now. 

I'm just noting this one for the record.  He's claiming that gun manufacturers based their sales models on at least 20% of the guns they make being sold illegally.

Mind you, he's not providing any actual evidence for that claim, despite being asked repeatedly.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms trade association, did respond to Rep. Sarbanes' comments. NSSF Vice President Larry Keane e-mailed CNSNews.com a statement that read, "Congressman Sarbanes' outrageous statement alleging that responsible, law-abiding members of the firearms industry anticipate and calculate into their business plans that 20 percent or more of their products will be illegally sold is highly offensive, absurd on its face and patently false."

The organization is demanding that Sarbanes immediately provide the factual basis for his claim or retract his comments and apologize to members of the firearms industry.

CNSNews.com has made Sarbanes' office aware of the NSSF comments but still has received no response at this time.

We're not likely to get a response, either.

The first round of hearings in Annapolis have been scheduled for Wednesday, February 6. Hearings start promptly at 1PM. It is imperative that anyone reading this message that is able to attend the hearings makes arrangements to do so. Among the bills being heard that day in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee is SB 281, the ironically titled "Firearm Safety Act of 2013." It is without question the most draconian and overt gun grab ever attempted in the state of Maryland.

More details will be coming regarding bills that have been filed to this point, but please plan to show up in Annapolis on February 6. The state of Maryland is literally coming for your guns and the only way to stop them is to make your voice heard!

For more information on what you can do to help, see the writeup at MarylandShallIssue.

New Jovian Thunderbolt analyzes new legislation introduced in the Maryland State Senate and concludes that it is a confiscation bill.  Mr and Mrs Maryland, turn them all in.

The Maryland Legislature is being asked to consider a broad range of gun control proposals. The Governor claims he will have an easy road to banning anything he determines to be an "Assault Weapon" and to force fingerprinting and registration of all buyers in the state. He will ban magazines holding more than ten rounds and force expensive training requirements on those who would purchase and own firearms.

The goal in Maryland is simple: make the ownership and use of firearms so expensive and so onerous that people will not bother to exercise their right. Gun Controllers in this state look to take a big bite today, and then continue to chip away at our rights every chance they get. Their goal is the eventual destruction of the right through implementation of impractical laws, expensive training and onerous regulation. O'Malley wants to eventually force you to turn in your guns, just like they will in New York.

Maryland residents, don't be caught by surprise.

Hot Air reports that Maryland's governor is about to start pushing for gun control.  The only surprise here is that it took so long.

He's supposedly going to push for gun licensing, mandatory training, fingerprinting of all gun buyers, and a ban on so-called "assault weapons".  In other words, the usual BS.  Also, "restricted visitor access" to schools, whatever that means.  Unless restricted access means an armed guard enforcing the locked door, it won't make much difference.

Remember when Nazi Germany insisted that members of a particular religion wear identifying symbols so they could be ostracized and oppressed by everyone else? 

You may find that situation uncomfortably close to reality if you live in Maryland.  Legislation introduced in both the state House and state Senate will require that gun owners have a special license to purchase handguns, and will mark their status as a license holder with a "scarlet G for gun owner" on their existing drivers license. 

UPDATE: SaysUncle notes that he can't find that language in the bill.  I looked, and I can't find it either; in my original post I was relying on the summary at Ammoland, specifically this language:

It is uncertain whether or not a "gun owner" designation on a driver?s license will constitute "probable cause" to search a vehicle during a routine traffic stop.

It could be I jumped the gun a bit by not checking the language myself. 

... that the modern Democratic party is sufficiently insane to be on the edge of violence concerning President Bush, yet continue to perceive no understanding of the dangers posed by an intrusive government determined to track its citizens. 

Councilor Rob Consalvo wants to put a tracking device into newly manufactured guns and have legal gun owners retrofit their firearms so owners and police can locate and retrieve stolen guns the same way police use a computer chip to locate stolen cars.

Let's hope Smith and Wesson learned from their mistake in signing the Clinton deal.

Bear in mind, too, that we already know how Maryland treats gun owners.  During the DC sniper incident, the police chief decided it would be worthwhile to investigate all "registered" Maryland gun owners who had purchased a .223 semiautomatic rifle, including "requesting" that their firearms be turned over to the police for "testing".

I do not want to live in a nation where individuals and their possessions are tracked by the everpresent State.

Hat tip to Ravenwood for this story.

Altering specified requirements for the issuance of handgun permits; repealing the requirement that the Secretary of State Police find that an applicant seeking a permit has a good and substantial reason to wear, carry, or transport a handgun; establishing a 45-day period within which the Secretary must issue a permit to carry a handgun after an application is approved; requiring that an individual be certified by a qualified handgun instructor before receiving a permit; etc.

Maryland considers shall-issue. Only a few states left!

Gun control advocates pressed yesterday for new measures that would ban assault-style weapons, expand ballistic fingerprinting and require immediate reporting of lost or stolen handguns - and their efforts picked up tentative support from Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. With Montgomery County police Chief Charles A. Moose and the mother of slain sniper victim Conrad Johnson appearing yesterday at an Annapolis news conference in support of the bills, gun control immediately emerged as one of the prominent issues of the General Assembly session.

The proposals include banning "assault weapons" (ie, ugly semiautomatic rifles) and ballistic fingerprinting on more classes of firearm. Ehrlich, by the way, was the NRA's favored candidate in the Maryland elections. Gee, he's doing a bang-up job of defending firearm rights, isn't he?

One of the only major races focused on gun control has been called in favor of the Republican (and pro-gun, relatively) Ehrlich, over Townsend, who has aggressively called for more gun control following the sniper shootings.

Under the Democratic leadership of Gov. Parris Glendening and Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the State of Maryland has notched the second highest violent crime rate in the nation according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Report for 2001.

According to the FBI report, there were 783 violent criminal acts committed per every 100,000 citizens in Maryland during the course of the 2001 calendar year. Florida topped the category with 797.2 per 100,000.

Since Glendening and Townsend, who assumed the role of crime czar, took office in 1995, Maryland's violent crime ranking has jumped ahead of six states to achieve its current standing.

ROCKVILLE -- With the Washington-area sniper putting gun control at the top of the agenda, Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's relentless attacks on U.S. Rep. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s NRA-friendly record were starting to get some traction in the Washington suburbs.

But this week, Ehrlich (R) pounced on the revelation that the state failed for at least three months to provide background check information to the FBI, allowing hundreds of rifle and shotgun purchases to go unchecked and possibly into the hands of criminals.

The embarrassing news came in the form of a request by U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) for a General Accounting Office investigation of how $6.7 million in federal grants to improve background checks has been spent since 1995, when Gov. Parris N. Glendening and Townsend (D) took office.

Read all the way to the end. There are some juicy quotes from Townsend explaining her opposition to fully-automatic weapons, plus "AK-47s and Uzis on the streets". She doesn't even know they are already practically banned.

The mayor of Frederick, Md., ordered police to stop a group of activists carrying a "Save the Ten Commandments" banner from marching in a weekend parade.

The group's leader, who had a permit to march in the parade with a banner, was handcuffed and detained until the parade had passed.

"I was shocked, shocked that we were not allowed to march in the parade," said Neil Parrott, 32, president of the Friends of Frederick. "I did not expect this kind of reaction from the city at all."

Arrested for what he had on his banner??!

Proponents of Maryland's ''ballistic fingerprinting'' law -- enacted two years ago as a new tool in the war against gun crime -- have some explaining to do, considering a string of sniper shootings during the past few days in the Maryland suburbs just outside Washington, D.C.

As anti-gun advocates continued to characterize him as a pawn of the National Rifle Association, Republican gubernatorial candidate Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. clarified yesterday a statement he made about the state's Handgun Roster Board, contending that he never said he would seek to get rid of it.

On Friday, Ehrlich said he would "review" the state's gun control programs "to see what's working." The two he mentioned were the ballistic fingerprint program, in which state police keep track of shell casing data, and the Handgun Roster Board, which approves all handguns before they can be sold in Maryland.

"The Handgun Roster Board was sold as this really great idea," he said Friday. "I looked at it pretty recently and they were having problems getting folks on the panel and actually doing their jobs." He said state gun crime statistics led him to suspect these programs weren't working and might be a waste of state resources.

Maryland Republican gubernatorial candidate Robert L. Ehrlich is willing to judge gun-control laws on their merits ý do they actually work? ý and if not, get rid of them.