Baltimore Sun Praises Maryland's New Gun Control … But Why?

Only when you have made the decision to support gun control groups for ideological reasons, even when gun control hasn't reduced crime and potentially reduces the ability of good people to defend themselves, can you write an editorial like the one that came out of the Baltimore Sun earlier this week.

"Thanks to new restrictions passed by the General Assembly and signed by Gov. Martin O'Malley this year, Maryland is now in the top tier of states when it comes to the strength of its gun laws." This ranking, of course, is determined by an objective, level-headed source--cough, cough--"a new report from the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Campaign."

Give us a break.

Maryland's high "score" is nothing new. Ever since gun control groups began "scoring" states on the severity of their gun control laws, they have always rated Maryland near the top of their scores.  The Old Line State has long been praised by gun control groups for its waiting period on the purchase of handguns and "assault weapons" (the latter now banned under the recently-enacted law) and its law allowing carry permits to be denied to otherwise-qualified applicants for discretionary reasons. 

Yet over the last 10 years, Maryland's annual murder rates have been 77 percent higher than the average of those of its neighboring states.  A Policy Mic article reports, "Baltimore has consistently been one of America's deadliest cities."

No matter, according to the editorial.  "There is good reason to believe that the new laws Maryland passed will help," the Sun said. That's because "Baltimore is an aberration compared to the rest of the state, fueled in part by the circumstances of the drug trade."  And, as everyone knows, violent narcotics-trafficking gangs who get guns illegally are a problem tailor-made for Maryland's new law requiring handgun buyers to undergo expensive and lengthy training, just as it was tailor-made for its handgun waiting period.

Again, give us a break.

If other parts of the state have low crime rates, as compared to Baltimore and Maryland's D.C. suburbs, and if the disproportionate share of crime in those urban areas is due to the local drug trade, might the focus of crime control most productively center on the drug trade?  How could anyone at a newspaper, other than a gun control absolutist who happens to work as a "journalist," think that gun control is the solution?