Court Opinion

ID: 9631414
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:37:19.412371+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:53.588522
License: Public Domain

Dissenting WILNER, J., which Raker and BATTAGLIA, JJ., join.
With respect, I dissent from the result reached by the Court because, on the facts of this case, I believe that there was a transfer of the gun from Chow to Nguyen in clear violation of what is now § 5-124 of the Public Safety Article (PS). I would therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals.
The Court defines the word “transfer” as requiring a permanent exchange of title or possession of the firearm, but that would render the term essentially meaningless, and we do not read statutes, especially regulatory statutes of this kind, to render terms deliberately used by the Legislature meaningless. The Court goes through an analysis of dictionary definitions in an effort to determine what “transfer” means. Such definitions are often helpful, because words used in a statute are ordinarily given their plain meaning, but the ultimate issue *474is not how the lexicographers define the word but what the Legislature intended to achieve.
The provision in question was added to the law as part of what the Legislature called the Maryland Gun Violence Act of 1996, which was a comprehensive law designed to place additional limits on the trafficking in regulated firearms. Prior to that law, a dealer, who was then defined as a person engaged in the business of “selling” or “repairing” firearms, was not permitted to “sell or transfer” a regulated firearm until seven days had elapsed from the time an application to “purchase or transfer” the weapon was filed by the prospective “purchaser or transferee” with the Secretary of State Police. See former Md.Code, art. 27, §§ 441, 442 (1987 Repl.Vol. and 1995 Supp.).
The purpose of the waiting period was, and remains, to give the Secretary an opportunity to make an investigation and determine whether the prospective transferee is eligible to own and possess the weapon. See former § 442; current PS §§ 5-121, 5-122. Although the former law spoke in terms of the dealer not selling or transferring the firearm until the waiting period expires, (and the current law speaks in terms of the dealer not selling, renting, or transferring the firearm until that period has expired), both laws obviously were intended to preclude any actual delivery of the firearm until that time. See current PS § 5-123(b), (c), and (d), requiring the dealer to “complete” the sale, rental, or transfer within 90 days after notice that the application was not disapproved and to notify the Secretary of the completed transaction within seven days after “delivery” of the firearm; also former § 442(j). Read in a sensible way, the law prohibited a dealer from delivering a regulated firearm to another person, pursuant to a sale or transfer agreement (and currently a rental agreement as well), until the expiration of the waiting period.
In limiting the waiting period to transactions with licensed dealers, the former law contained an obvious and enormous loophole. Totally unregulated were secondary transactions, in which any person, other than a dealer, who happened to be in possession of a regulated firearm could transfer it to someone *475else, including a person not legally eligible to own or possess the weapon. The 1996 law clearly was intended to close that loophole. Not only did the 1996 law (current PS § 5-123) preclude dealers from renting firearms prior to the expiration of the waiting period but, more significantly, in what is now PS § 5-124, captioned “Secondary Transactions,”it applied the same seven-day waiting period applicable to dealers to sales, rentals, and transfers by persons who are not dealers. That was certainly a major and important extension of the effort to control the trafficking in these weapons.
The terms “sell” and “rent” have a fairly clear and restrictive meaning. The term “transfer” is obviously a broader term, meaning something beyond a sale or rental; otherwise, there would have been no reason for the General Assembly to place and leave it in the statute. The Court seems to accept that “transfer” would include a gift, at least a permanent gift. The real question is whether it includes a loan. Keeping in mind that the prohibition against transferring a firearm until expiration of the waiting period applies to both dealers and non-dealers, I cannot imagine that the Legislature, in its effort to close a loophole, intended to open one even larger than the one it closed, by allowing both dealers and non-dealers to lend regulated firearms to persons without complying with the seven-day waiting period, but that is precisely what the Court seems to be saying. Does the Court really mean to hold that a dealer and a non-dealer, through the fiction of a loan, can lawfully deliver possession and control of a regulated firearm to a person without regard to the waiting period? If so, the Court will have absolutely eviscerated the law, at least with respect to secondary transfers, and to what end—for what purpose?
I would hold that “transfer” includes a loan—at least one in which possession and control of the firearm is relinquished for anything more than a momentary period. Like all statutory language, the word should be given a reasonable meaning. I agree with the Court that the Legislature did not intend the word “transfer” to prohibit a firearm owner from allowing a prospective purchaser, lessee, or transferee to test fire the *476weapon before deciding whether to purchase, rent, or otherwise acquire possession or control of it, any more than it would prevent the owner from allowing the prospective customer to hold and examine the weapon in the owner’s presence. Nor would it prohibit an owner from allowing another competent person, at a firing range, to shoot the weapon in the presence of the owner. Those kinds of circumstances do not constitute a transfer of the weapon; to give that kind of expansive meaning to the term would be wholly unreasonable and would extend the term well beyond what could possibly have been intended.
But that is not what occurred in this case. If the original objective of the parties had been implemented—test firing of the weapon at a range to see if Nguyen was truly interested in buying it—there would have been no violation of the statute. When Chow allowed Nguyen to retain the gun in his exclusive possession and control for some indefinite time, however, there was a transfer—an unlawful one.
Judge RAKER and Judge BATTAGLIA have authorized me to state that they join in this dissent.