That Maryland Gun Control is Working Out Splendidly

Maryland isn’t the most anti-gun state by a long shot, but that’s not because Maryland isn’t trying to stomp all over people’s right to keep and bear arms. They just haven’t managed to go as far as states like Rhode Island, New York, California, Illinois, New Jersey, and a few others. In other words, they don’t suck as badly on guns, but not for lack of trying.

And we should remember that we keep being told gun control laws work and, when they don’t, it’s because not every state has sufficient gun control rules in place.

Well, let’s see how that’s working in Maryland, shall we?

Police said Jerod Taylor, 39, fled the scene of a reported domestic assault on Nov. 7 before police responded to a home in the 20000 block of Goddard Road in Lexington Park.

During their investigation, officers found multiple guns in plain sight, despite Taylor being barred from possessing firearms due to prior convictions.

Detectives executed a search warrant, leading to what police called an “extensive collection of weapons,” according to the sheriff’s office.

Police said they found 3D-printed ghost guns, semiautomatic rifles, handguns, shotguns, an AK-47, 18 suppressors and over 1,300 rounds of ammunition. They also found 74 auto sears, which are used to convert firearms to fully automatic weapons, and a 3D-printed fully automatic rifle.

So Taylor is a prohibited person, yet he still had 80 firearms, including a number of 3D-printed guns. Not all of them were “ghost guns,” though. It sounds like many were traditionally manufactured weapons, meaning that he skirted Maryland law to get them. He didn’t get the permit needed to purchase handguns. He didn’t undergo the universal background checks either.

But let’s not just focus on how Maryland’s gun control laws failed here. After all, federal gun control didn’t stop him either.

While anti-gunners sometimes like to say that guns in criminal hands are really the fault of pro-gun states, that doesn’t cover the full-automatic weapons, the auto sears, or the suppressors, all of which are NFA items prohibited at the federal level.

What anti-gunners need to learn how to comprehend is that criminals don’t follow laws.

Oh, they might articulate it, but they don’t seem to really understand it. If they did, they’d stop pretending lawful gun sales somehow drive the criminals or that they wouldn’t find a way around literally every law you care to put in place.

There’s an illicit arms trade throughout the European criminal underworld, for crying out loud. That’s an entire anti-gun continent, and yet criminals still get guns. You’re not going to just make that stop here, either, because while we could hypothetically mirror European gun control, none of them have a semi-failed state bordering them like we have, which would be happy to funnel guns into the United States instead of out.

Gun control is a losing proposition. It’s beyond time for states like Maryland to recognize that and start working on other efforts to reduce violent crime. If this guy could get all of these federally restricted items despite all the laws in place, it’s time to give up on the idea altogether. We can do better and do more if we abandon the failed gun control experiments.