They wanted Maryland as a poster child for a reason. There are other states with worse laws, longer waiting times, more banned firearms, bigger hoops to jump through for permits etc.
I won't claim to be keenly aware of current Maryland issues, but I remember awhile back it was a popular retirement or cummute from destination of wealthy people from neighboring large cities. The $61,592 median income still makes it the 2nd wealthiest state.
The latest criteria they judge a place on can be changed to suit the destination they want to highlight.
Yes,, there are many worse states with much worse gun control laws and if it wasn't for the May Issue matter, I would say it is a decent place in spite of the irritating laws (like regulated "assault weapon", banned "assault pistol" and the seven day wait).
Yes it is popular for commuting to DC from MD, but the wealthy are mostly from one county North of DC and the Virginia side. The upper middle and lower middle class are the rest and are also partly in the one county that is filled with the wealthy now....The retired don't commute to DC and I don't know what gave you that impression.
Yes, MD is one of the wealthiest states by houshold income, but we also have a lot of poverty, poor and working poor. MD is pretty well off for even the poor, but for some reason we have some of the worst crime in the country as well. It has a lot to do with drugs and an unwillingness for the DAs and the courts to proecute harshly and keep the criminals in jail longer, and it has to do with our prison system isn't really geared to rehabilitate much anymore. In any case, the result is that we still have many violent criminals on the street and they know most victims are unarmed making us easy prey.
The reasons the Brady campaign likes MD so much is because of the cosmetic gun control laws such as all handguns made after 2002 must have an internal locking device......but that has been circumvented by the state itself by having removabal gun locks allowed to be used instead (like the Omega). The Brady Campaign doesn't want to discuss that aspect when they try to tout us as their poster child. The incident of aqccidental child deaths never was that bad in MD anyway.
The one handgun in thirty days is another one, but does not apply to "designated collectors" and anyone can be designated as a collector for free in this state.
The loaded and unlocked handguns being accessible to kids of any age under 16 does not apply to all kids and they will ignore that aspect as well.
The "assault pistol" ban has not influence crime at all.
The regulating of "assault rifles" has not affected their use in crime. It was rare before and it is rare now. They love to say that cops will be killed by an AW, but in our state the last time an officer was shot and killed by a rifle of any kind was back in the 70s. They can't claim the either the AP ban, nor the AW restrictions have done anything for crime, but they try to make it look like it is a good thing we have them on the law books.
Little do they know that someone can register a banned "assault pistol" as an AOW or SBR and still own one in MD.
MD allows all NFA except exlplosives, unchecked FTF sales of unregulated long guns, people bringing so called AWs and handguns into the state without registering them and we do have at least some carry permits issued to some people (very hard to get one though).
Brady just loves the concepts and ignores the practice. They are fools though because since we have some of the worst crime and I think the worst murder rate, we are the worst example of gun control laws. The laws are applied against the wrong people and they just restrict the law abiding who are less likely to commit any of the MD crime from carrying a gun and buiying one easily.
