By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) on Monday announced it would file a lawsuit challenging legislation which would ban the country’s most popular handguns, if Democrat Gov. Wes Moore signs the bill now on his desk.
The legislature recently passed both Senate Bill 334 and House Bill 557, which—according to an NSSF news release— “would prohibit the manufacture, sale, offer for sale, purchase, receipt or transfer of certain semiautomatic pistols the state loosely defines as “machine gun convertible pistols.”
This legislation defines such a handgun as “any semiautomatic pistol with a cruciform trigger bar tht can be readily converted by hand or by using common household tools into a machine gun by the installation or attachment of a pistol converter as a replacement for the slide’s backplate.”
Such aftermarket devices, which are illegal, are commonly referred to as “Glock switches,” even though the legislation does not identify any specific brand of sidearm.
“To borrow on a line from Jame Carville, whom Democrats revere, ‘it’s the criminal, stupid,’” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF’s Senior Vice President and General Counsel in the news release. “These bills, and similar laws passed in other states, punish law-abiding citizens by infringing on their Second Amendment rights to legally obtain the firearms they choose to protect themselves and their families against criminals who, by definition, have no respect for life or law. Instead of enforcing the law and holding these criminals accountable, Maryland’s lawmakers pander to gun control donors and antigun special interests to ban an entire class of firearms, which the U.S. Supreme Court’s Heller decision clearly holds violates the U.S. Constitution. Should Governor Moore sign these bills into law, NSSF intends to have Maryland’s Attorney General Anthony Brown explain in court why Maryland willfully violates the rights of her citizens and ignores its responsibility to hold criminals accountable.”
Maryland is among the most restrictive states when it comes to gun control. The state bans so-called “assault rifles” and has other restrictions in place regarding concealed carry permits.
