Montgomery County, MD Rewrites Gun Ordinance After Court Loss, Keeps 100-Yard Carry Ban Near Schools, Parks, and Churches

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ROCKVILLE, MD — Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich signed Expedited Bill 23-26E into law Monday, rewriting the county’s firearms ordinance after the Supreme Court of Maryland found that parts of it exceeded the county’s authority. The rewrite keeps the county’s prohibition on carrying firearms within 100 yards of schools, parks, libraries, polling places, houses of worship, and legislative assemblies.

Elrich announced the signing himself, saying he joined Councilmember Dawn Luedtke, Police Chief Marc Yamada, and community partners “to sign updated firearm safety legislation that preserves the strongest local protections allowed under MD law.” The specifics of what changed, as reported by WUSA9, show a county trimming its restricted-places list only as far as the court forced it to, and keeping everything else.

The Supreme Court of Maryland ruled in April that the county could continue regulating firearms near certain locations but went too far when it extended restrictions to places such as hospitals, childcare facilities, and some government properties. Those locations are now out of the county’s definition of a public assembly area. The new law also creates a limited exemption allowing firearms to be transported through restricted areas in compliance with state law, including for concealed carry permit holders traveling on public highways.

The bill also revises the county’s ghost gun provisions. Per WUSA9, the county repealed a prior restriction on the purchase, sale, transfer, or transport of unserialized firearms in the presence of minors, while continuing to prohibit transferring ghost guns, undetectable guns, and certain firearm-making materials to minors, and barring the storage of ghost guns where children can get to them.

“Our commitment to public safety has not changed,” Elrich said at the signing. Luedtke, the bill’s lead sponsor, called it “a commonsense, balanced approach in Montgomery County’s local law to keep guns out of sensitive community spaces.”

Here is what that balance looks like from the other side of the ledger. For Maryland concealed carry permit holders, a 100-yard radius around every school, library, park, house of worship, and polling place in a county as built up as Montgomery turns a lawful carry route into a mapping exercise. Carrying legally in Maryland already demands a compliance mindset, and this ordinance adds another layer of map-reading to it. The person a location ordinance actually reaches is the permit holder who reads county code before leaving the house, not the person already carrying illegally on the way to commit a crime that was illegal before the vote.

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The county ordinance also sits on top of a state carry regime that is itself under legal attack. The Second Amendment Foundation describes SB1, signed by Governor Wes Moore in May 2023, as implementing “an expansive new ban on areas where a person could lawfully carry a handgun,” and SAF’s lawsuit challenging those location bans, Novotny v. Moore, remains active in the Fourth Circuit. That case targets state law, not this county ordinance. Separately, NRA-ILA announced in May that a cert petition was filed in an NRA-supported challenge to Maryland’s “sensitive places” carry restrictions, which puts Maryland’s list of banned locations squarely in front of the Supreme Court.

I will continue tracking Expedited Bill 23-26E and the challenges to Maryland’s carry restrictions as they move through the courts.