Imagine getting trounced in the Maryland Supreme Court over a local gun control law, and thinking that doing the minimum you can conceive of will not just make the community safer, but also comply with the court's opinion on the matter?
How bad do you have to screw up for the Supreme Court of Maryland to slap you down?
Well, Montgomery County found out when they passed a local carry killer measure that effectively means you could lawfully carry concealed to check your mail...maybe. It depended on where you lived, mostly.
And while the county council made some adjustments, a lot of folks don't think they did nearly enough.
A group of gun rights advocates — including some who were directly involved in a recent legal battle over Montgomery County’s restrictions on ghost guns and firearm wear-and-carry — aren’t satisfied with a County Councilmember’s proposed remedies.
Several advocates voiced their opposition to the proposal during a Tuesday afternoon public hearing in Rockville, arguing that the revisions don’t go far enough to address issues the state’s highest court found with existing county law.
...
Councilmember Dawn Luedtke (D-Dist. 7) on May 12 introduced a bill she said would align the local law with the county’s authority under state law.
“I don’t want anyone to think that by doing this, I’m trying to reduce protections related to firearm violence — exactly the opposite,” Luedkte said when introducing the bill, adding that her goal is to make sure the county’s protections are enforceable.
Those who spoke during Tuesday’s public hearing focused on Luedtke’s proposed definition of “places of public assembly,” arguing the revised version would still impose an undue burden on state wear-and-carry permit holders.
“Why go through the process of getting a permit if Montgomery County isn’t even going to respect the permit?” asked Michael McIlhargey, who identified himself as a 10-year county resident and wear-and-carry permit holder.
Well, the answer to that is that they don't want you to go through the process. This is designed specifically to discourage people from either getting a permit or using it. They don't respect concealed carry, or any kind of carry, and they don't want you to do it.
They can't ban it, though, and Bruen killed the whole "may issue" thing they so love, so this is what they do. They just make it such a pain in the butt to do that, people won't bother.
But what's so bad about the new measure?
McIlhargey spoke at the public hearing virtually. Several others — including Engage Armament plaintiff Eli Shemony and Mark Pennak, an attorney who represented plaintiffs in the case — spoke in person at the council office building. All were opposed to Luedtke’s bill.
If Luedtke’s bill passes, the county’s definition of a “place of public assembly” would no longer include hospitals, community health centers, long-term care facilities and childcare facilities. Gun regulation in those places falls to the state.
People would still be prohibited from bringing guns within 100 yards of a park, place of worship, school, library, recreational facility, multipurpose exhibition facility, polling place, courthouse or legislative assembly under Luedtke’s proposal.
“There’s an old saying in the legal business that the last thing you want your client to be is legally stupid,” Pennak said during the public hearing. “I regret to say that this bill is legally stupid.”
In other words, they removed a few particular facilities, but there are still more than enough in place, including the buffer zones, that it's incredibly difficult for someone to navigate day-to-day life anywhere in the county while carrying a firearm.
Again, that's on purpose. That's the intent.
And it doesn't make the new measure any less "legally stupid" than the previous one.
I can think of places here in my own hometown where you have schools, churches, and libraries all within enough distance to one another, and places like banks where trying to just run some errands with a gun would be virtually impossible unless you just decided to say "Screw the law" and do what you're going to do. Better to be tried by 12 than carried by six, right?
But we shouldn't have to decide.
Yes, the Supreme Court allowed for sensitive places to be set aside as "gun-free" zones, but I'm pretty damn sure they never wanted to include public parks with no controlled access, places of worship, regardless of what the congregation might want, the streets around schools, and the like. This goes way too far, and under Bruen, while Justice Clarence Thomas warned New York not to declare the island of Manhattan as "sensitive," it seems that Montgomery County is trying to essentially do the same without having the cajones to actually admit it.
