Firearms enthusiasts had already been flocking to Maryland gun shops and shooting ranges since the June 23 Supreme Court decision making it easier to obtain and carry a concealed weapon. But demand surged last week after Gov. Larry Hogan (R) issued an order bringing the state in line with the ruling.
Customers — ranging from the curious to seasoned gun owners long frustrated by Maryland’s strict stance on carrying firearms — have been calling and visiting gun shops in search of small, easily hidden handguns, firearms dealers said. State-mandated training classes have been booked well in advance, and instructors are sometimes in short supply. The Maryland State Police has received 11 times the usual number of new permit applications since the court struck down state provisions requiring gun owners to demonstrate a special need for carrying a firearm for self-defense.
“It’s something that in Maryland, I know you had to have a pretty damn good reason to have concealed carry,” said Tom O’Malley, 27, who dropped by the Gun Shack/Crosswind store in Mount Airy this week with his wife.
O’Malley, who lives in the town, said he wanted a handgun for extra security while doing his auto repair business through Facebook Marketplace. His wife, Kelsey, 26, has been thinking about carrying, too, since a bunch of creepy guys followed her around one night while she was shopping. Packing only pepper spray for self-defense didn’t seem to cut it, she said.
“It’s scary when you’re by yourself and you’re a young female,” she said.
Alex Rozental, who owns AM Shooting in Damascus, said the two-week buying spree cleaned him out of 9mm semiautomatic handguns that are popular for concealed carry, such as the Sig-Sauer P365 XL, the Springfield Armory Hellcat and the Glock 19. All go for upward of $600. He said he also hasn’t seen a run on sales like this since the early days of the pandemic and the civil unrest during social justice protests two years ago.
“I see all sorts of customers — construction workers, business owners — through all the backgrounds,” Rozental said. His training courses — which run about $400 a pop — are booked through September.
Many customers come with questions about the licensing requirements to purchase a handgun or obtain a carry permit. The requirements — which Maryland and several other states tightened after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut — include fingerprinting, a background check, and at least four hours of in-class and shooting range instruction in a state-approved class just to purchase a handgun. Sixteen hours of instruction are required for concealed carry, along with a refresher course for license renewal.
Before the Supreme Court’s ruling, Maryland also required gun owners to provide a “good and substantial reason” for carrying a concealed weapon. In practice, the bar was set so high that only certain types of business owners, such as those transporting large amounts of cash or valuables, could obtain a permit.
“For the individual citizen, you really needed to prove your life is in danger,” Rozental said.
Many Maryland gun owners, like Katie Novotny, didn’t even try.
“That wasn’t really on my radar because I knew I wasn’t going to get a carry permit at that time,” said Novotny, a contractor at the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground. Novotny grew up around firearms in rural Harford County. She hunted raccoons, entered shooting competitions and assembled a gun collection, including World War I- and World War II-era rifles. She also became an advocate for gun rights after Maryland tightened gun laws in 2013.
“That just kind of lighted a fire in me to fight,” said Novotny, 39.
Aware that previous Supreme Court firearms decisions set the stage for repealing Maryland’s primary barrier to concealed carry, Novotny applied this year and obtained a permit. But it was also tightly restricted, allowing her to carry only when transporting money as treasurer of Maryland Shall Issue a gun rights organization. Since the ruling, however, that restriction has been lifted.
“People just didn’t apply — people like me, that didn’t have a special reason. So it wasn’t an indication of how many people wanted it,” she said. “We overwhelmed the system.”
The Supreme Court, ruling 6-3 in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, struck down the New York provision requiring a special need for concealed carry. The court’s conservative majority, holding that Americans should not be required to prove a need for exercising a constitutional right, said states could nonetheless impose other reasonable regulations, including background checks and firearms training, to ensure a person is capable of properly handling a concealed weapon.
The Bruen decision overnight changed the stance on licensing concealed firearms in New York, Maryland and other states with restrictive gun laws from “may issue” to a presumptive “shall issue,” so long as other criteria are met. (Some states, known as constitutional carry states, require no permit but sometimes issue them to satisfy states with reciprocal permitting laws.)
As of July 1, Virginia residents had 720,363 active concealed handgun permits, Corinne Geller, a Virginia State Police spokeswoman, said in an email. The District has 9,643 active concealed carry permits, of which 1,686 were issued this year, D.C. police spokeswoman Alaina Gertz said in an email.
Elena Russo, a Maryland State Police spokeswoman, said state police received 5,314 first-time concealed-carry applications since the Supreme Court’s decision, compared with 609 applications in the same approximately two-week period last year. So many applicants flooded the agency’s electronic portal that the software used to send out automated acknowledgments temporarily stopped working.
By law, the state police are supposed to make a determination on applications within 90 days. Until now, the process took about a month or two, Russo said. With the exponential surge in interest, she said, the process could now take longer.
Gun-control advocates mourned the Bruen decision as yet another faulty interpretation of the Second Amendment that will cause more mayhem in a society already awash in firearms and violence.
“I think the bottom line is more guns in public spaces does not lead to more safety,” said Melissa Ladd, head of Maryland’s chapter of Moms Demand Action. Ladd, a substitute teacher in Montgomery County, criticized Hogan for rushing to loosen the state’s concealed-carry law. She also urged political leaders to follow New York’s lead by creating more gun-free public spaces. Montgomery County Council President Gabe Albornoz introduced such a measure Tuesday.
Gun rights advocates, however, hailed the Supreme Court decision as an acknowledgment of one’s right to self-defense and an overdue recognition of reality: Criminals don’t go through legal niceties to carry firearms. They note that Maryland’s murder rate, despite a small dip, has climbed steadily since the state passed the landmark Firearms Safety Act of 2013. Homicides increased to 573 in 2020, up 5.5 percent from the previous year and up 48 percent from 387 in 2013, according to the state police uniform crime report. The murder rate has also jumped to 9.5 per 100,000 people from 6.5 per 100,000 in 2013.
Firearms owners say more guns means less crime — arguing, say, that criminals will think twice about carjacking someone who might be lawfully armed — while gun control advocates say more concealed weapons lead to more bloodshed. Each side cites studies to back its position. The Rand Corp., in a comprehensive review of the research literature, found evidence for either argument to be limited or inconclusive.
Meanwhile, some Maryland gun owners say the time to buy is now because — given the nation’s deep partisan divisions — the law could abruptly change again.
“Now that it’s a little bit looser, we figured we’d take advantage of it,” said O’Malley, who was shopping for firearms with his wife. “Who knows how long it’s going to be around?”
This story has been updated.