-Caveat Lector-
Maryland will be first in fight for
smart guns
Glendening pursues unproven technology for
childproof arms
By Michael Dresser
Baltimore Sun Staff
Gov. Parris N. Glendening says he believes the
firearms industry needs a little push to make safer
guns. He says Maryland's just the state to do it.
Today, the governor will meet with the task force he
named to draft legislation to require that all
handguns sold in Maryland be fully childproof. He
plans to tell the 21-member panel that he does not
want a bill mandating trigger locks, but legislation
that calls for sophisticated "smart gun" technology
built into the weapon itself.
Critics say Glendening's position is absurd -- that he
wants to mandate use of a technology that does not
exist and might never. But the governor plans to tell
the task force that its job is not to debate whether to
require safer guns but how to go about it.
The panel's work could set off one of the bigger
battles of the 2000 state legislative session.
Advocates on both sides say the debate would draw
national attention to Maryland -- and its governor --
during a presidential election year.
"Governor Glendening, of the 50 governors, appears
to be the one who has taken the lead," says task
force member Stephen P. Teret, director of the Johns
Hopkins University's Center for Gun Policy and
Research.
If the governor prevails, Maryland would be the
first state to adopt smart-gun legislation. National
gun rights organizations and the firearms industry
are determined to keep such legislation off the
books. National gun control advocates believe if
Maryland acts, other states will.
A similar effort in New Jersey ran aground this
year, but the political dynamic in Maryland is much
different. New Jersey Republican Gov. Christine
Todd Whitman offered tepid support to the concept
in a state with a Republican-led legislature. Here, a
powerful Democratic governor will be leading the
charge in a General Assembly dominated by
Democrats.
Glendening promised such legislation during his
1998 re-election campaign but put it off for a year,
citing a lack of solid information. But in a speech
last weekend to the Maryland Association of
Counties, he vowed to make ground-breaking
smart-gun legislation a top priority in the year
ahead.
In an interview this week, he reiterated his
commitment, dismissing industry claims that the
technology wasn't ready and couldn't be forced. He
cited the federal government's role in pushing the
adoption of new technologies from air bags to
childproof safety caps on medicines.
"Most of these companies do not develop the safe
technologies until you tell them it must be done that
way," Glendening said.
Advocates can cite compelling reasons why smart
guns that can be fired only by an authorized user are
a worthy goal.
There is Jordan Garris of Baltimore, dead at 3 after
finding his father's Ruger handgun under a mattress
in June. There's Baltimore Officer James E. Young,
nearly killed and partially blinded after being
wounded with his own gun in a 1992 arrest attempt.
Teret, one of the nation's leading advocates of smart
guns, says "the country is searching for solutions" in
the wake of deadly school shootings in Arkansas,
Colorado and elsewhere. "The solution that uses
technology to change a product rather than looking at
behavioral change is going to be very attractive," he
said.
The technology could be as elusive as it is
attractive, however. Most of the nation's gun
companies are skeptical, if not overtly hostile, to the
entire concept.
Beretta U.S.A. Corp. -- the branch of the Italian gun
maker based in Accokeek in Prince George's County
-- has attacked the notion of smart guns as expensive
and potentially dangerous. Shortly after Glendening
was re-elected in 1998, the company formed a
Maryland political action committee and began
soliciting donations from gun owners to fight the
anticipated legislation.
Among gun manufacturers, only Colt Manufacturing
Co. is in favor of developing smart-gun technology,
and as a result it has become a virtual pariah among
gun-rights advocates. The company has estimated
that a personalized gun could be developed for the
law-enforcement market within three years and for
the consumer market within another three years.
That prompted gun rights clubs and firearms dealers
to boycott Colt's products, cutting deeply into its
sales.
While Colt is committed to the technology, it also
has opposed mandates such as the one proposed by
Glendening. The response to the proposed
legislation has been even more vehement among gun
owners' groups.
John H. Josselyn, legislative vice president of the
Associated Gun Clubs of Baltimore, says the state
task force -- chaired by State Police Superintendent
Col. David B. Mitchell -- is not technically
qualified to deal with the issue. He predicts the
legislation will "crash and burn" in the legislature
because "you can't create technology by legislation.
"I think it's going to create a hornet's nest such as
Glendening has never seen before," Josselyn says.
"Basically it would amount to a ban."
Glendening will find some support among
entrepreneurs who say their promising new
technologies are being squelched by gun
manufacturers.
Kenneth Pugh, chief executive of Fulton Arms in
Houston, says smart-gun technology already exists
and that he has a full range of prototypes -- rifles,
shotguns and pistols -- to prove it. Pugh's guns use a
system similar to the one being developed by Colt.
They employ a radio signal transmitted from a ring
worn by the authorized user to the gun, allowing the
weapon to be discharged.
Steve Morton, chief executive of Oxford Micro
Devices in Monroe, Conn., is promoting another
technology that would use instant fingerprint
identification to enable an authorized user to fire.
Morton says he could build a prototype in nine
months and a commercial product in a year and a
half.
But Glendening and other proponents also face
potentially bill-killing skepticism from one of the
groups they say will benefit most: police officers.
Massad Ayoob, captain of the Grantham, N.H.,
Police Department and a nationally recognized
expert on firearms use in law enforcement, says the
technologies he's heard about have basic conceptual
flaws. He said the entrepreneurs touting the new
technologies have not been showing up at law
enforcement gatherings to demonstrate their work.
"It's vaporware," he says. "They tell you about it,
but they can't show it."
Originally published on Aug 27 1999
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