In a meeting that lasted 35 minutes and 15 seconds, the state’s handgun roster board approved 49 of the 64 guns brought before them last week, allowing Marylanders to sell or acquire these handguns.
That’s 33 seconds per gun.
Since 2018, the Maryland Handgun Roster board has approved thousands of petitions, allowing new handguns or handgun models to be sold in the state as long as they functioned, a Baltimore Sun data analysis found.
Between 2018 and 2024, unless a gun did not fire — or a petitioner incorrectly filed their petition — the board passed it through. The Sun’s analysis shows the board approved 95% of handguns put before them during those seven years, adding nearly 2,500 new handgun models to the state’s roster, including several versions of the SIG P320, a 9mm handgun that has been the subject of dozens of lawsuits that allege the gun fires without a trigger pull. (SIG Sauer has prevailed in some cases.)
The board “functions much more like a rubber stamp,” said board member Cassandra Crifasi, who Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, appointed last year. “As long as the gun doesn’t have any gross technical defects.”
But anti-gun control advocates say that’s how the handgun board should work, and that the people on the board voting to ban weapons that function perfectly are violating the Second Amendment. They also say that keeping guns out of the hands of people who are going the legal route is unfair, as criminals don’t pay attention to the laws.
To report this story, The Sun analyzed hundreds of pages of minutes stretching back to January 2018, and thousands of gun applications, attended the latest board meeting, interviewed six board members, one gun control advocate, two Second Amendment advocates and a gun violence researcher. What emerged was a portrait of a deeply divided, frustrated board, stymied by differing ideology and vague legal language.
Formed in 1988, the board was initially tasked with banning “Saturday Night Specials” or junk guns — cheap, poorly made handguns often imported from the Baltics or South America and a danger to bystanders and users — and includes 11 members from law enforcement, gun sales and anti-gun violence backgrounds, whom the governor appoints every five years.
Today, the board meets between four and six times a year to review the petitions put before them by residents asking for permission to buy or sell a particular weapon in the state.
Members must weigh nine factors when considering a handgun, including detectibility, usage for sport activity or protection, accuracy, weight, quality of materials and manufacturing, “reliability as to safety,” caliber and concealability.
But the board has become a minefield, both practically and ideologically. On the practical side, some board members say they don’t know how to interpret the nine factors they’re supposed to weigh, without a shadow of a doubt.
But brush all these issues aside, and you find a deep division at the heart of the board: What is its purpose and role today?
Some say the board should ensure weapon quality alone, and that a vote based on anything other than whether the gun functions as intended is a step too far. They say it’s been hijacked by people who’ve decided to curtail gun owners’ rights to own what is considered a handgun in Maryland (including short-barreled rifles) without the authority of public legislation.
Others say the regulations call for them to weigh weapon safety and concealability, and they would be remiss to add some of these larger, more powerful weapons to be added to the state’s approved sale list.
“What we’re seeing here, lately, is a handgun board abusing its authority to basically deny the sale of a handgun,” said Mark Pennak, the president of Second Amendment advocacy group Maryland Shall Issue. “They’re brewing for a constitutional challenge.
‘A rubber stamp’
Although the state’s handgun roster board was created by a Democratic legislature, and gun enthusiasts feared the board would simply deny all gun petitions put before them, that has not been the case — in fact, it is more or less the opposite, according to The Sun’s analysis.
In March 2025, the last time the board met to consider new guns put before it, members added 105 new handguns or models to the state roster out of the 126 put before them. That’s 83% — it’s the lowest pass rate since September 2019, when a petitioner put 24 incorrectly-filed petitions in front of the board. (Without those petitions, the pass rate would have been 95%, The Sun calculated.)
In May 2025, seven petitions for short-barreled rifles that were brought to the board again for reconsideration after an initial denial were all denied again.
- In 2024, 98% of the 399 guns put before the handgun roster board passed.
- In 2023, 97% of the 357 guns put before the handgun roster board passed.
- In 2022, 96% of the 271 guns put before the handgun roster board passed.
- In 2021, 97% of the 300 guns put before the handgun roster board passed.
- In 2020, 95% of the 513 guns put before the handgun roster board passed.
- In 2019, 90% of the 495 guns put before the handgun roster board passed.
- In 2018, 95% of the 228 guns put before the handgun roster board passed.
“The guns that have been rejected generally have some kind of a mechanical problem,” said board member Robert Bajefsky, calling the board “a rubber stamp.”
“They approve basically everything,” he said. “They approve stuff that shouldn’t be approved.”
Moore’s office did not respond to a request for comment about the board’s passage rate and the inclusion of short-barreled rifles in the state’s handgun definition.
‘Pistols or not?’
Bajefsky, who was appointed under Moore, has consistently voted “no” on most guns that come before the board, citing safety as a concern. Crifasi said she saves her “no” votes largely for the short-barreled rifles that come before the board.
Under state law, short-barreled rifles are considered handguns, something Crifasi, a longtime competitive shooter under the International Defensive Pistol Association and co-director of the Center on Gun Violence at Johns Hopkins University, finds frustrating.
Bajefsky shares the sentiment.
“It feels like there is not much attention being paid to whether these firearms are really pistols or not,” Crifasi said.
“The argument we hear is that just because a gun can accept a stock doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be approved, because if somebody puts on a stock and fires it from the shoulder, they’re breaking the law,” Crifasi said. “But you’re making these guns available to be purchased, and people can … add accessories to them once they’ve brought them home, thereby getting around the assault weapons ban.
“There’s this circular logic that makes it hard to really feel like the board is doing what it can and should be doing.”
Karen Herren, who leads nonprofit advocacy group Marylanders to Prevent Gun Violence, told The Sun she believed the board had been stymied by the machinations of gun manufacturers.
“Over time, the industry has honestly just learned how to market around the board,” Herran said. “In recent years, as you are seeing by looking at the passage rates, they’re, for the most part, rubber-stamping the petitions.”
She called out several manufacturers, including Glock, for refusing to make engineering changes to their pistols that would prevent people from converting them into assault weapons, which are illegal in Maryland.
“That’s a clear safety risk, and a functioning board would be able to take action on something like that and remove those firearms from the list, because it’s driving so much of the violence,” Herren said.
Michael Errico has been a citizen board member for about 20 years. Appointed under Gov. Bob Ehrlich, a Republican, he’s been re-appointed every five years by each successive governor. Errico is a lifelong gun enthusiast, shooting clay pigeons and paper targets alike.
Despite the board’s high passage rate, he disagrees with the assertion that the board is “rubber-stamping” every gun that can fire.
“No, I don’t think they are,” he said. “I think they’re approving the guns that meet the criteria set up in the legislation. They’re made with quality.
“If it does [meet the criteria], there’s no reason to not approve it.”
Concealability, reliability as to safety
Board members consistently told The Sun the requirement to interpret the nine factors confuses board members and petitioners alike.
For instance, does “reliability as to safety” refer to the mechanical safety of the gun, the safety of the bearer and others, or that the gun functions as intended, without injuring the bearer?
And is concealability in a gun good or bad? A transcript from the May 7 meeting The Sun reviewed shows one petitioner arguing that their preferred gun should be approved because it is concealable, just not when assembled. That same day, another argued the handgun he wanted was so big it’s not concealable, and so the board should approve it.
The state police, who, by state statute, test the weapons for the board, provide reports on the weapons, chair the board, provide a meeting place and keep its records, told The Sun they don’t provide guidelines for how to interpret these factors, as the board is not a Maryland State Police Board.
Both Herren and Crifasi believed the board and its votes could be done away with in favor of updating the state’s definition of a handgun to match the federal definition (a gun that can be fired with just one hand) and a stringent testing regimen done by an independent lab, mimicking California.
Errico disagreed, saying that while manufacturer quality has increased, he believes that shutting the board down would send the wrong message to gun manufacturers.
Herren hoped to see the state begin to implement a legal review of each handgun petition.
“There legitimately needs to be some level of legal review to determine whether a firearm petition that is brought in the state of Maryland abides by Maryland law,” she said, “whether we say that’s through a board or, say, the Attorney General’s Office.”
Mark Pennak, of Maryland Shall Issue, told The Sun he believed the board’s members who were voting no on guns that fired and were considered handguns by Maryland state law were taking the law into their own hands.
“All they’re basically doing is banning the acquisition of handguns at this point, and that’s a constitutional violation,” he said.
Contact Kate Cimini at 443-842-2621 or kcimini@baltsun.com.
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