More than 100,000 individuals in Maryland could become disqualified from owning their registered gun under a bill currently under consideration by state lawmakers.
According to the Associated Press, the Maryland House of Delegates is debating a proposal that would link the state’s gun and criminal registries, enabling law enforcement officials to more effectively seize firearms in the possession of those convicted of felonies or violent crimes.
Under Maryland law, anyone convicted of such crimes is required to relinquish their firearms. However, the chief sponsor of the proposed bill, Delegate Luiz Simmons (D-Montgomery Couny), said the law is incapable of truly being enforced if police cannot use their database to pinpoint the individuals in question.
If passed into law, the new bill would require police to run a check twice a year in search of convicted felons with registered guns. Police, meanwhile, believe the linked systems would lead them to disqualify 10 percent of registered gun owners. That amounts to approximately 110,000 people.
As noted by the AP, California passed a similar law back in 2007. In a statement released by Simmons, the lawmaker said that since linking its registries, the California has collected more than 10,000 guns from convicted felons and is working on rounding up another 40,000.
Ten percent, eh? That's a bit short of your number, Mikeb, but then, the police have to deal with reality, not fantasy. But what's this about the registered owners becoming disqualified? As felons, they're already prohibited persons.
ReplyDeleteNo, wrong Greg Camp - as usual.
DeletePlenty of felons own guns acquired illegally; and then there is the cottage industry that the NRA promoted to get guns back in the hands of violent criminals, especially felons.
It takes formal action to correct that - and that is what this is.
What makes this so interesting is that of course the delusional gun huggers have been circulating the myth, fantasy, propaganda that other states have been confiscating guns - notably NY, NJ, and more recently Connecticut.
DeleteThe reality of course is that NO such confiscations have occurred in spite of the fact that law enforcement and other authority KNOWS that there are tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of illegal guns in people's hands - and in some cases, specifically who has them.
There is appropriate due process that has to be gone through to take away illegal guns or related equipment, no matter how obvious and illegal those guns may be.
Being a prohibited person has relatively little connection to being prevented from having guns -- it just makes it a little harder to buy a gun from an FFL dealer, and then ONLY if you live in and are buy a gun in a state that keeps up their share of the NICS data base (and many states do not).
Dog gone, these are obviously not cases of felons illegally acquiring guns and then registering them with the state. This is a list of lawful gun owners who registered guns with the state, and then became a prohibited person. It is not much different than in your cross-post a couple posts down where you were talking about how such a plan couldn’t be done. They have a list of people who might illegally own a gun. It is plausible that “assault weapon” owners got rid of their guns, just like it is plausible a felon or mentally ill person got rid of their guns when ordered by the court to do so. Executing searches and confiscations isn’t different in either case. You point about warrants is valid, but I don’t know that anybody was disputing that. California already has a task force confiscating guns by cross-referencing a list of registered gun owners with prohibited people to which they came up with 20,000 names. I am not sure how they are handling warrants, whether they have a warrant for each search or some judge has being issuing en masse warrants (which would be scary). What they are probably doing is approaching houses without warrants and asking for voluntary compliance. If the resident point to their “get a warrant” doormat and closes the door, then they try and get a warrant for those cases (but of course that will allow for a person to move a gun). I’m not sure how they’re doing it, but they are doing it.
DeleteTechnically, an “assault weapon” confiscation, and a prohibited person confiscation would be executed the same, but that doesn’t mean there is the same appetite for both. The PR around confiscating “assault weapons” would be much worse, and the scale would be much larger. They’d probably rather go after bad people than good people with bad guns.
Since they are gunsucks as well as felons, their entire sexual satisfaction is constructed around weapons.They won't give them up, and they must be seized. Plus NRA gunsuck kitchen table sales and "gunshow loophole" sales provide more guns for felons from gunsuck NRA members. We need a national policy of felon seizure of weapons.
DeleteAs an observer from abroad, it would be interesting to note that the U.S. state of Maryland affords its subjects no legally recognized individual right to arms. The state ought to consider the threat presented to both its interests, corporate interests, and those of the sovereign United States in its policy. It would be most advisable for the state to review the registration records in order to collect all weapons possessed by unauthorised non-state actors (authorisation could and would likely be given to certain entities or "persons" in the event of a state interest in the protection of certain proprietary or human assets worth defending) with or without explicit legislative authorisation for direct or passive confiscation of firearms in the hands of certain non-state actors. The authorisation of ex post facto prosecutorial authority may be necessary to ensure domestic tranquillity and the management, control, or prohibition of public dissent.
DeleteGreg, the 10% mentioned in this article is the amount of registered lawful gun owners who have become disqualified. That's only a piece of my Famous 50%, as you should well know.
DeleteI'll point out once again that in Illinois and California where thousands of warrants have been served in cases like this, there has been no bloodshed. Amazingly not a single one of those guys turned out to be a so-called 3%er. That's why l suggest we change the name of that "molon labe" crowd to the .0003%ers, and that may even be generous.
Mikeb, your infamous fifty percent exists in your own mind alone. But thanks for admitting that despite Dog Gone's lies, states are confiscating guns.
DeleteAnd egads, E.N. is back.