We’ve been reporting on the surge in gun sales in Virginia over the past few months, a boom caused by Democrats’ wave of gun control legislation that includes a ban on so-called assault firearms and large capacity magazines. Now a similar wave appears to be forming in Maryland in response to Gov. Wes Moore’s signature on a bill that will ban the sale of Glocks and other striker-fired handguns later this year.
Erik Shilling, who runs Solidarity Firearms Training in Westminster, Maryland, told the Baltimore Sun that “Anytime there’s a gun law that passes, no matter what it does, people will panic and buy guns,” adding, “There’s a lot of first-time gun owners that are hearing this and will go, ‘I can’t get what I need to defend myself’ … If I could get a message out to people, I would say, don’t worry, you can still get what you need.”
With all due respect to Shilling, I wouldn’t call this “panic” buying. Instead, it’s a logical response to legislation that will remove some of the most popular pistols in the country from gun stores across the state. The bill that Moore signed into law prohibits the manufacture, sale, offer for sale, purchase, or transfer a “machine gun convertible pistol,” which is defined as “any semiautomatic pistol with a cruciform trigger bar that 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.”
Schilling told the Sun that “Glock has, for a very long time, been selling guns that are readily convertible to machine guns that are federally illegal, and for some reason, Glock has been getting away with it,” which is an odd stance for a firearms instructor, in my opinion. Then again, Solidarity Firearms Training’s website proclaims that it exists so that “our most targeted comrades can have a place to practice their human right to self defense free from the racism, transphobia, queerphobia, and other bigotry that so many other firearms instructors bring,” so Schilling appears to have a pretty big chip on his shoulder when it comes to the firearms industry and Second Amendment community in general.
Schilling is right that Marylanders will still be able to purchase a wide variety of firearms once the ban takes effect on January 1, 2027, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have an impact on gun owners or the right to keep and bear arms in the state.
… “A lot of people have been waiting for the Gen 6 Glocks,” said Dave Shindle, the owner of Maryland Firearms in Dundalk. “We have high hopes that people will still be able to buy Glocks, just not ones that are easily convertible.”
[Doug] Imhoff, of Gundalk Weapon Works, said he’s worried that State Police may add the new Glocks to the list of banned guns in the coming months. He said his shop has been stocking up as more customers are looking to buy Glocks before the ban takes effect, and called Maryland’s new law a “huge detriment to the gun industry.”
Despite the current increase in sales, Imhoff is right. As my colleague Tom Knighton covered earlier today, gun sales in Colorado are cratering at the moment, in large part because of the steady stream of anti-gun legislation that’s become law in recent years.
Anti-gun activists know that passage of their favored gun control laws leads to a spike in sales in the short term, but they’re willing to make that trade-off because once a law takes effect its impact will be felt for as long as it remains in place. Eventually, there will be fewer guns in the hands of lawful owners than what would have been the case without the adoption of a particular restriction, and anti-gunners are perfectly fine with playing the long game.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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