Correct! Maryland's law is a 7 day wait from purchase date at FFL.

After filling out a ATF 4473, the buyer fills out a Maryland form 77R.
From what I'm told the NICS check and backround check is done by MSP
in "7 days" for release on 8th day.

This all worked fine until lately with the SB 281 passed and will be signed into law on 1 Oct 2013.

This is what is new Maryland law. NRA WILL go to court as of 1 Oct I'm told.
http://marylandshallissue.org/share/SafetyActFAQ.pdf

Right to carry
 

I had a license in MA when I was in the 10th GP. Was not a real problem to get it. In NY it sat in the Watertown Police department for 5 years as there was no time limit and they did not like the military.
This pass weekend in AR they caught a felon in possession of a fire arm with drugs, after he robbed a store and fled from the police. Under the Federal law its 5 years for the gun and each of the others are multipliers, for time without parole. Under state law he might get two. Every time the Feds get a case from the local, the liaison for the Feds emails me to let me know the got another one. The down side is the Maytag repairman gets more business them him. On the upside, its the first day of summer so I celebrated by giving myself 4 boxed of 325 gr. 50 cal AE and 4 boxes of 325 gr. S&W 50 cal.

That is not totally correct as it varies state to state. In SC once a person is "pardoned" all of the individual rights are restored including the right to bear arms. ;)

Past time for this thread to receive a well deserved bump.

Why Gun Owners Are Right to Fight Against Gun Control

The anti-gun crowd doesn't want "compromise." They want confiscation and control.

David T Hardy | July 18, 2013
Reason.com

In April, the Senate rejected the Toomey-Manchin gun control proposal. In the wake of its defeat many asked why gun owners and their organizations resisted so limited a measure. Granted, it would have had little but symbolic benefit. Its core was to require background checks at gun shows (which Bureau of Justice Statistics concluded involved a whole 0.8 percent of crime guns) and on Internet gun sales (a miniscule proportion, most of which probably go through licensed dealers anyway). But why not accept something so modest, in light of the draconian ideas then being floated as alternatives?

Understanding the rejection requires understanding gun owners’ shared experiences. Compromise requires that both parties relinquish something. If your counterpart’s position is “give me this now, and I’ll take the rest later,” there is no real compromise to be had. Over decades, that has been precisely the experience of American gun owners.

Back in 1976, Pete Shields, chairman of what is today the Brady Campaign, candidly laid out the blueprint for The New Yorker:

We're going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily — given the political realities — going to be very modest. Right now, though, we'd be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal — total control of handguns in the United States — is going to take time. My estimate is from seven to ten years. The problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns sold in this country. The second problem is to get them all registered. And the final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition — except for the military, policemen, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors — totally illegal.

The group’s first target was “Saturday Night Specials,” inexpensive small revolvers, alleged to be criminals’ preferred gun. When that approach gained traction, Shields shifted to a larger target, claim that criminals were now using “expensive, but small pistols,” so all small pistols had to be banned. “Concealability is the key,” he now explained.

As the years passed, it became apparent that this was going nowhere; a different first “slice” would have to be found. In 1990, Violence Policy Center (VPC) announced that it had found it. The debate must be switched from small handguns to large “assault rifles.”

Handguns, VPC explained, had become a media and political nonissue, while calls to outlaw “assault rifles” would benefit from mistaken impressions, i.e., “the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun.” That rifles of all types were involved in about 300 homicides a year was beside the point. The search was for a target of opportunity, not a solution to crime.

The major gun control organizations bought the idea, to the point of changing their names to replace “handgun” with “gun.” Pete Shields’ group, Handgun Control, Inc., became the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The National Coalition to Ban Handguns became the Coalition To Stop Gun Violence.

The change underscored a lesson gun owners had already learned. Their opponents would go for any target of opportunity—if handgun restrictions didn’t fly, try to restrict rifles—and use that as a foundation to take more in the future. Any “reasonable compromise” would simply be a first step in a long campaign to make firearm ownership as difficult, expensive, and legally risky as possible.

Take the example of California. There, 1920s legislation required a permit for concealed carry of a firearm, required dealers to report handgun sales to the state, and imposed a one-day waiting period for handgun sales.

The one-day wait was meant to impede “crimes of passion,” but in 1955 it was increased to three days, in 1965 to five days, and in 1975 to 10 days.

Open carry of a firearm was initially allowed. In 1967, open carrying of loaded guns was prohibited. In recent years, open carrying even of unloaded guns was forbidden in incorporated areas. The mere sight of an unloaded gun was apparently too much for the California legislature to tolerate.

In 2001, dealers were forbidden to sell handguns that were not approved by the government, after rigorous laboratory testing, funded by the manufacturer. Every slight variation, even changes in color or finish, required a new certification. The tests actually had nothing to do with reliability or safety, as evidenced by the exemption of law enforcement firearms from them.

Along the way, the state banned “assault weapons,” magazines holding more than 10 rounds, and private gun sales that didn’t go through dealers. In 1999, “one gun a month” was enacted, for no discernible reason (why would a gun runner pick the most tightly regulated state in the West as his source?)

Today, the weapons regulation portion of the California Penal Code Annotated spans over 1,050 pages, yet at last count 68 more gun control measures are pending in the legislature. No matter how much the advocates of gun control get, it will never be enough.

(Page 2 of 2)
Or try New Jersey, which requires a license to own guns, plus a separate permit for each handgun. Carrying open or concealed is in practice forbidden (the legal standard for a permit is “urgent necessity”), carrying of hollow-point bullets is subject to complex rules, and magazines are limited to 15 rounds.

That’s not enough, apparently, since the New Jersey legislature is considering bills to cut the magazine limit to five rounds, and to require psychiatric evaluations and home inspections before issuance of the firearm ownership license. Recently three legislators had an embarrassing “hot mike” problem after a gun bill hearing, in which someone proclaimed, “We needed a bill that is going to confiscate, confiscate, confiscate.”

Or try New York, long considered to have the strictest gun laws in the country, including requiring pistol possession permits (issued at the sole discretion of police, with application fees as high as $340), carry permits limited in some jurisdictions to government officials and celebrities, and a 10 round magazine limit. Then came the Newtown slayings, and the legislature decided it must do something more. The legislation it rushed through reduced the allowed magazine capacity to seven rounds (effectively outlawing the many firearms for which seven round magazines have never been made), required background checks to buy ammunition, and greatly broadened its “assault rifle ban.”

New York’s Attorney General described this as “modest first step.”

So much for compromise.

http://reason.com/archives/2013/07/1...rters-are-righ


David T. Hardy is a Tucson, Arizona attorney and author. He has published 21 law review articles on the right to arms, two of which have been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court, and produced the documentary film In Search of the Second Amendment.

tonyz
 

Outstanding read!

As I see there are too many judges, lawyers that do not read into the DC vs Heller case and the US Constitution and it's contextual meaning. One of this is in the text of the DC vs Heller opinion. Yes, I know it is an opinion 5-4 also.
page 34 of opinion.

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content...zoom=100,0,754

.It was the first Supreme Court case in United States history to decide whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense.

On May 15, 1939 the Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion by Justice McReynolds, reversed and remanded the District Court decision. The Supreme Court declared no conflict between the NFA and the Second Amendment had been established, writing:

"In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense. Aymette v. State of Tennessee, 2 Humph., Tenn., 154, 158."


Gun rights advocates claim this case as a victory because they interpret it to state that ownership of weapons for efficiency or preservation of a well-regulated militia unit of the present day is specifically protected.

I would submit that AR's are protected and so are 20 or 30 round magazines for those firearms.

That opinion has also been used to show the idea that the NFA should have no bearing over weapons that are in common use by the military, such as machine guns, silencers etc.

Today that opinion may be contested as written because short barrel shotguns are in fact in use by the military.

Neither the accused, Miller, nor his attorney showed up to argue this case.

The government was the sole presenter.

I wish Mr. Miller had a Thompson or a BAR instead of a short-barrelled shotgun.

Then the government would have had to make a completely different argument, one that might not have been sustained.

TR

Ark. District Arming More Than 20 Teachers, Staff With Guns

By ANDREW DeMILLO Associated Press
CLARKSVILLE, Ark. July 30, 2013 (AP)

http://abcnews.go.com/US/t/story/ark...m%2F4850013923

Massad Ayoob: The right carry gun

<snips>

For that matter, when the individual finds a single gun that seems best suited to him or her, even that isn’t always the best for all the time, in every place or season. We don’t wear the same clothing in a New Hampshire winter we’d wear in an Arizona summer. We don’t hunt woodchucks with the same guns we’d use to hunt moose. Why use one gun for every single time we carry?


The bottom line? It’s up to each of us to assess our own “threat profile.” Each of us has different body shapes and wardrobe selections for both workdays and “off-duty.” Each of us has different mixes of experience and habituation with guns. And all those things can change day-to-day, season-to-season, and situation-to-situation.

No one else decides for us. The choices are ours. And if you wind up with a “wardrobe of carry guns” just as you already have a wardrobe of clothing for different seasons and occasions… well, there just isn’t anything wrong with that.

IIRC, Miller was sporting a sawed-off double barrel, not a trench gun.

TR

An interesting story - complete article at link below.

Virginia gun crime drops, as state's firearms sales soar

Published August 04, 2013
FoxNews.com

Amid calls nationwide for stricter gun control laws, Virginia is experiencing a unique trend: the state's gun-related crime is declining but firearms sales are increasing.

Firearms sales rose 16 percent to a record 490,119 guns purchased from licensed gun dealers in 2012, according to sales estimates obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

During the same period, major crimes committed with firearms dropped 5 percent to 4,378.

"This appears to be additional evidence that more guns don't necessarily lead to more crime," said Thomas R. Baker, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University's L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs who specializes in research methods and criminology theory.

"It's a quite interesting trend given the current rhetoric about strengthening gun laws and the presumed effect it would have on violent crimes," Baker told the newspaper. "While you can't conclude from this that tougher laws wouldn't reduce crime even more, it really makes you question if making it harder for law-abiding people to buy a gun would have any effect on crime."

<snip>

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/08/04...+Latest+-+Text)