Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, at a gun policy summit at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, announced the details of a far reaching four-point plan to address gun violence in the state of Maryland. He called gun violence “a public health issue” and said his plan would also address school security and mental health. “There is a sickness in this country and that sickness is gun violence,” O’Malley said.
The legislative package, formed in conjunction with state health secretary Dr. Joshua Sharfstein and state school superintendent Lillian M. Lowery, will be released sometime this week. It will include a ban on assault weapons and stricter rules for obtaining a gun license. “Military assault weapons that have no place on our streets,” O’Malley said adamantly. The new licensing rules would require fingerprinting before the purchase of any firearm except for rifles and shotguns.
Vincent DeMarco, an Annapolis gun-control lobbyist and national coordinator of Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence, called the new measures, “the best thing the state can do, the best thing to reduce gun violence.”
“Someone asks you to purchase a handgun for them, and you know they’re going to use it in a crime, and you have to go the state police to get fingerprinted, you’re certainly not going to do it,” DeMarco said.
