Handgun

Two Baltimore police commanders who had been suspended during separate investigations involving an abandoned police vehicle and the loan of a handgun have been cleared of criminal and administrative wrongdoing, their lawyers said Thursday. Majors Anthony Brown and Terrence McLarney have returned to their jobs running the tactical and homicide divisions, respectively, according to the chief spokesman for the Baltimore Police Department. The spokesman declined to comment further, citing personnel issues.

A former NBA center was charged with two counts of first- and second-degree assault after Anne Arundel County police said he struck a man in the face with a handgun during a weekend cookout. Oliver J. Miller, 41, was arrested Tuesday at his Edgewater home in the 200 block of Braxton Way. Police said he hit a 32-year-old unidentified Arnold man in the head Saturday evening, police said. Miller faces assault, reckless endangerment, disorderly conduct and related charges. He is 6 feet 9 inches tall, according to NBA.com.

A determination of whether there was criminal conduct in the case of a gun that was registered to a Baltimore police commander but stolen from a Southeast Baltimore business may rest on whether the gun was "loaned" or "transferred. " Maryland's highest court ruled in 2006 that it is legal for a regulated handgun to be "loaned" between two people who are permitted to own and obtain a handgun. Although the state regulates the transfer of firearms, the Court of Appeals said that "transfer" only refers to a permanent exchange of title or possession and "does not include gratuitous temporary exchanges or loans.

A national gun control advocacy group weighed in Tuesday on a federal lawsuit that challenges Maryland's handgun permit laws, saying that the changes sought would be "bad law and even worse policy. " In an amicus brief, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence urges the dismissal of a lawsuit brought last year by the Second Amendment Foundation on behalf of Hampstead resident Raymond Woollard, a Navy veteran who was denied a renewal of his handgun permit. Brady Center President Paul Helmke said in a statement that Maryland has "wisely rejected the gun lobby's agenda of 'any gun, anywhere for anybody.' Now the gun pushers want the courts to gut Maryland's laws and let virtually anyone carry a hidden handgun in public.

After a weekend in which 18 people were shot in the city, including a police detective who was injured and a 4-year-old boy who died, Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III used the spate of violence to argue Monday for tighter gun laws in Maryland. Bealefeld, who has accompanied Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to Annapolis to push for tougher penalties for gun offenders, bemoaned the availability of illegal guns in the city, and said the arrest record of a man accused of opening fire on a city police officer Friday night in East Baltimore underscores the point.

City police executing a search warrant in a high-crime area of East Baltimore found five illegal handguns and arrested four people, including one who had been charged with illegal handgun possession in January. Acting on a tip obtained by a patrol officer, police raided a home in the 1700 block of E. 25 t h St. at about 1 p.m. Tuesday, where they found the guns along with crack cocaine and $500 cash, a spokesman said. The area, near the border of the Eastern and Northeast police districts, has seen nearly a dozen shootings in recent months, and police said they hope the guns will be linked to some of those cases.

Edwin F. Hale Sr. Hale, chairman and chief executive officer of First Mariner Bancorp, was detained at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport Friday morning for having a loaded handgun in his carry-on luggage. Hale, who also owns the Baltimore Blast indoor soccer team, said he was traveling to Milwaukee for a game, but was stopped at a security checkpoint in the Southwest Airlines terminal. He said he had intended to leave behind the .38 caliber revolver that he regularly carries in his briefcase.

The politicians, pundits and public will debate until we're blue in the face about who is to blame for the tragedy in Tucson, Ariz., and like the political discourse of the past decade, there will be no winners. What is not debatable is the fact that if Jared Lee Loughner hadn't been able to purchase a Glock 19 semiautomatic handgun with four magazines capable of holding 33 rounds, there would be six fewer lives lost to handgun violence and 14 fewer injured. As long as our country allows lax laws governing the ownership of handguns, the American people must take collective responsibility for these deaths.

It is a senseless tragedy that each year in the United States we have multiple instances of mass shootings like the one in Tucson Saturday. I think that part of the solution would be to ban all handguns but allow qualified citizens to own rifles. That way, people who enjoy target shooting and hunting would be free to do this, but it would not be so easy for criminals and others to hurt people. The problem with handguns is that they are easy to conceal, and people would be safer if it was against the law to own one. Bill Simmons, Baltimore