As citizens of, and those employed in, the state of Maryland we would like to
formally request that Maryland alter it's gun laws such that any upstanding
citizen will be issued a concealed firearm permit unless the governing body
responsible for licensure can find a good and substantial reason that an
individual should not be issued a license.

The current law which states a person must have a good and substantial reason
to need a license is discriminatory against average citizens, given that it
provides means for those who own their own businesses or deal regularly in
large amounts of cash to obtain a license but does not allow the average
working citizen to do so.

In addition to being discriminatory, laws such as those currently in place in
Maryland have never proven to have a positive impact on violent crime and
have in fact been shown in some cases to negatively impact it. As supporting
evidence, we present this data compiled from the FBI's publicly available crime
statistics pages:



The average of the data presented above indicates a difference of over 100
percent in violent crime rate even if you remove the extremely high DC area,
which in fact has the strongest gun control laws of all our surrounding areas.

In addition to the crime rate being positively impacted by passing shall issue
legislation, the economic impacts it would have on the state are substantial. In
the 6 years since Michigan has passed their shall issue legislation they have
issued 130,000 additional concealed carry licenses. Maryland's current licensing
costs are $127.25 for initial licensure and $69.25 for renewal which is required
every 2 years. The resultant increase in revenue for the state would be in the
neighborhood of $2.36 million dollars a year. This revenue increase is without
introducing any additional taxes or cutting any programs. The calculations for
this additional revenue has been previously provided to members of the House
Judiciary Committee. Explanations of the calculations used are available here.

There is currently a bill that has been presented which would serve the purpose
of this petition. That bill is House Bill 2, we the undersigned urge you to consider
passing this bill which would only provide benefit to our state.