By Lori Montgomery and Katherine Shaver
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 29, 2000; Page B01
The makers of several popular handguns have halted shipments to Maryland in reaction to a first-in-the-nation safety law that requires manufacturers to create a "ballistic fingerprint" for every handgun
sold in the state.
Glock, Browning and a handful of other gunmakers say they are withholding gun shipments while they try to comply with the new law, which was passed this year and hailed as a major political victory
for Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D).
A growing number of states are considering requirements for ballistic fingerprints -- spent shell casings that are catalogued by state police and used to identify a gun's owner in the event the gun is used
to commit a crime. Maryland gun dealers and some state officials fear that until laws elsewhere are sorted out, the gunmakers will not change their manufacturing processes to satisfy the demands of
tiny Maryland, which accounts for just 2 percent of handgun sales nationally.
In the meantime, dealers say, Maryland gun owners are being denied access to legitimate firearms, a situation that could drag on for months.
"We have inadvertently created an unintended consequence of a de facto ban on some weapons from some manufacturers," said House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr. (D-Allegany), a key sponsor of the
gun safety measure, who has recently come under intense criticism from gun advocates in his rural Western Maryland district.
Gun buying has not slowed in the state, judging by the number of gun purchase applications filed with Maryland State Police. In October and November, 5,962 people applied to buy handguns in
Maryland, compared with 5,059 during that time in 1998, said state police spokesman Greg Shipley. (Gun purchase applications in Maryland were inordinately high last year -- 6,394 in October and
November -- in part because of widespread Y2K concerns, police said.)
Still, some dealers say the situation is seriously hurting business. Sanford Abrams, owner of Valley Guns in Baltimore and vice president of the Maryland Licensed Firearms Dealers Association, said
there are 3,000 handgun models that may be legally sold in Maryland. Since Oct. 1, he said, he has been unable to obtain about 65 percent of them. "I have a dozen special orders I can't fill, representing
$10,000 in December sales," Abrams said. "If it lasts the year, half the gun shops in Maryland are going to be closed."
This week, Taylor sent a letter asking Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. (D) to reinterpret the law to make clear that gunmakers unwilling to supply shell casings may continue to ship their weapons
to Maryland. The casings for those guns could be created by alternate means, possibly at a state police testing range, Taylor proposed.
Yesterday, Curran responded in a letter, saying state police have authority "to resolve the issue of whether a dealer may sell a handgun when a manufacturer has neglected or disregarded its duty to
furnish a shell casing."
But, Curran wrote, the law clearly requires gunmakers to create the shell casings. Weapons shipped without them can be seized, officials in Curran's office said.
"Someone's got to comply with the law on casings. And the manufacturer should be doing it," Assistant Attorney General Robert Zarnoch said.
At issue is a law known as the Responsible Gun Safety Act. It was passed last spring after an explosive legislative battle that pitted Glendening and his supporters against powerful lawmakers who
oppose limits on gun ownership.
At the time, the fight focused on another aspect of the bill, which requires handguns sold in Maryland after January 2003 to be equipped with internal trigger locks. The so-called smart guns are
intended to protect children from accidental shootings.
The trigger-lock provision was also a national first, and its passage drew hearty congratulations from President Clinton, who attended the bill signing in Annapolis.
The ballistic fingerprint provision was less controversial. It requires gunmakers to ship a single shell casing with every handgun manufactured after Oct. 1 of this year. The dealers are required to send
the casing to state police along with the name of the buyer when the gun is sold. Police then enter that information -- the casing's distinct markings, the type of weapon it came from and the gun owner's
name -- into a database.
Many manufacturers have had no problem complying with the law. Since Oct. 1, state police have registered about 150 shell casings from 14 manufacturers -- "overwhelming evidence of gun
manufacturers' intentions to comply with the law," said state police spokesman Shipley.
"We haven't heard from anyone who has said, 'We'll never again ship a gun for sale in the state of Maryland,' " Shipley added.
However, he said, some gun manufacturers have told state police that they are delaying shipments to Maryland until they can devise a way to accommodate other states' demands for ballistic fingerprints
-- particularly New York, which has a new law taking effect March 1. States considering the use of ballistic fingerprints include California and Massachusetts, according to the National Rifle
Association.
One gunmaker taking the cautious approach is Browning, based in Morgan, Utah. "From a manufacturing standpoint, we have to make sure we adhere to the requirements set in each state," said Travis
Hall, the gunmaker's director of marketing. Maryland, for example, wants the casings shipped in small manila envelopes. "New York may want it another way. California may want it a third way. As
manufacturers, we'd like to make things as consistent as possible.
"We understand the laws, and we certainly are going to work hard to be in compliance," Hall said. "But we are a law-abiding company. And we're not going to ship a product if we're not in compliance."
Paul Jannuzzo, general counsel and vice president of Glock Inc. in Atlanta, said his company, too, has halted shipments to Maryland. But the gunmaker hopes to comply with the law and resume
Maryland sales soon, he said.
"Frankly, it may not be worth it" to serve such a small market, Jannuzzo said. "But the other side of the equation is that we can't let the Kennedy Townsends of the world decide whether we're going to
sell guns in the state," he said, referring to Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D). "We can't succumb to that kind of pressure."
