BALTIMORE — On May 26, a coalition of gun rights groups filed an expected lawsuit challenging the recently enacted Maryland law that bans some of the country’s most popular legally owned pistols.
National Rifle Association of America (NRA), Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc. (FPC), and Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) filed a joint complaint against the governor of Maryland, the state attorney general, and the acting superintendent of the Maryland State Police.
“Maryland’s politicians just declared war on an entire class of constitutionally protected handguns and the peaceable people who want to own them. This ban is immoral, unconstitutional, and tyrannical,” said FPC President Brandon Combs in an email.
NRA v. Moore, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, challenges Senate Bill 334, a measure that passed both chambers earlier this year and takes effect on October 1.
Beginning on January 1, 2027, the new law prohibits the manufacturing, selling, purchasing, receiving, or transferring of so-called “machine gun convertible pistols,” a contrived definition for legally owned firearms which are infrequently illegally retrofitted with “switches” to increase the rate of fire.
In reality, the law targets Glock and Glock-style pistols – among the most popular in the nation – in what the complaint calls “a handgun ban,” adding, “The fact that the ban targets only one category of popular handguns does not make it constitutional.”
As with nearly every other piece of gun-control legislation, it exempts law enforcement.
The 13-page complaint also notes that the bill has the effect of completely barring Maryland residents from ever purchasing a Glock or Glock-style firearm because, “With exceptions not relevant here, federal law prohibits a person from transferring a handgun purchased or otherwise obtained outside his state of residence into that state. That means ordinary Marylanders are not permitted to purchase or otherwise obtain a Glock or Glock-style pistol in any other state.”
Although there is an implied grandfather clause that, in and of itself, provides no measure of comfort to gun owners simply for the reason it too can be repealed, as Rhode Island recently did in its AWB bill.
On their face, bills like SB 334 are simply disarmament measures that punish the law-abiding. Despite a small faction of criminals who ignore laws already in place (such as illegally fitting Glock-style pistols with switches or converters), over 100,000,000 American gun owners use firearms in a lawful manner every day. Firearms bans are facially unconstitutional.
