Common-Sense Gun Safety and Community Violence Prevention
Every resident deserves the right to live, work, attend school, and worship in safety without the terror of firearm violence. I am a gun owner and have been for decades. During my twenty years of active military duty handling advanced weapons systems, I learned a fundamental principle of command: one of the times of strictest control occurs whenever a weapon, ammunition, and a Soldier occupy the same vicinity. In the military, arms room procedures and live-fire protocols are tightly regulated, methodically inspected, and rigidly enforced. We enforce absolute accountability because we respect firearms' lethal power. Freedom and responsibility are inseparable.
Our nation faces an epidemic of firearm violence, yet mass shootings in classrooms, grocery stores, and workplaces have become so routine that our society has lost its shock. When a classroom of young children falls victim to gun violence, and our culture shrugs its shoulders, we have accepted moral defeat. We have permitted cynical partisan rhetoric and gun-lobby money to convince Americans that sensible safety standards violate constitutional rights. That is an unacceptable lie. Responsible gun ownership requires accountability, and Maryland must lead with common-sense solutions that save lives.
In Annapolis, I will champion mandatory secure firearm storage laws with real enforcement. Unlocked guns lead directly to preventable youth suicides, accidental deaths, and school shootings. If you own a firearm, you must store it securely. I will also strengthen Maryland's extreme risk protective orders so family members, healthcare clinicians, and law enforcement can act quickly through due process to remove weapons from individuals in crisis. Furthermore, we must shut down illicit distribution pipelines by penalizing straw purchases, banning untraceable ghost guns, and outlawing conversion switches that turn semi-automatic firearms into automatic weapons. Our laws must keep pace with emerging lethal technology to protect our neighborhoods and our first responders.
Finally, legislation alone cannot solve public safety challenges. We must make sustained state investments in upstream community violence intervention programs, hospital-based violence intervention teams, and street outreach workers who interrupt cycles of retaliatory violence before tragedies unfold. We must also expand crisis intervention training and funding for mobile crisis teams, ensuring licensed mental health clinicians accompany law enforcement to de-escalate psychiatric emergencies safely. As a veteran and lifelong gun owner, I refuse to treat dead children as an acceptable cost of living in America. I will bring military discipline, operational accountability, and unwavering resolve to the General Assembly to protect our communities.