Maryland Lawmakers Reopen Debate Over Gun Background Checks
By Dominique Maria Bonessi
A new bill would regulate the secondary private sales of rifles and long-guns between two parties and require background checks.
Maryland lawmakers reopened debate this week to further gun control measures in the state for the third year in a row.
A bill requiring background checks on the secondary transfer of rifles and shotguns has returned to the House floor for debate. Republicans attempted to add additional measures to curb gun violence, but Democrats turned them down. Meanwhile, gun control advocates from Moms Demand Action, the same group that is lobbying Virginia’s lawmakers, gathered outside the statehouse this week to push for lawmakers to pass the bill.
Dawn Stoltzfus, a resident of Annapolis, with Moms Demand Action, said the Republicans’ measures would water down the bill.
“This bill actually went through the process last year and by the end of it we had built in a number of exceptions for sportsmen, for hunters, for family members,” Stoltzfus said. “So I think the bill is as strong as it should be and shouldn’t be weakened any further.”
The bill would require people buying guns from sellers to go through a background check via the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. It adds exemptions including transfers between family members, law enforcement officers and gun collectors who follow laws set forward by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
“We have this loophole right now in Maryland law where criminals can purchase a rifle or a shotgun,” Del. Vanessa Atterbeary (D-Howard County), the bill’s sponsor, told lawmakers on the House floor.
In 2017, there were more than 700 firearm deaths and 587 homicides in the state, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Del. Nic Kipke (R-Anne Arundel County) and other Republicans attempted to add amendments to the bill that would address handgun violence in the state. He proposed two amendments that would make straw purchases of handguns a felony and possession of a gun while dealing drugs a crime of violence.
“I would eagerly want to vote for a law that will make all of us in our state safer,” said Kipke, “And respectfully to the well-intended advocate, the bill sponsor and those that support the initiative: The bill before us won’t make us safer; won’t make my daughter safer; won’t make my son safer.”
But, Atterbeary encouraged Kipke to come up with a separate bill to address straw purchases and possession of drugs.
“Colleagues, this is a distraction,” Atterbeary told lawmakers on the House floor. “It is a complete and utter distraction.”
Last year, the bill received renewed support from lawmakers after the mass shooting of five employees at The Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis in June 2018. The assailant, Jarrod Ramos, was able to obtain a long-gun without going through a background check. Ramos has pleaded guilty to his charges, but is maintaining his insanity defense. A trial for his insanity plea is scheduled for March.
The bill failed last year because the House and Senate couldn’t agree to an amendment that would add exceptions for people with religious beliefs. That amendment was proposed by Senator Bobby Zirkin (D-Baltimore County), who resigned after Senate President Bill Ferguson demoted him as chair of Judicial Proceedings Committee.
The final House vote on this bill is expected sometime next week. The Senate is expected to take it up and vote within the next few months. Moms Demand Action say they will be back in Annapolis to vouch for this bill and others on the table this year.
Other pieces of gun control legislation in the pipeline this year would not prohibit someone from purchasing a firearm if they use medical marijuana, authorize law enforcement to forfeit firearms to a federally licensed dealer and expand penalties for those repeated violent gun offenders.