This is the Baltimore Sun's story. This guy has been tilting at windmills for decades:
http://www.sunspot.net/cgi-bin/editorial/story.cgi?section=archive&storyid=1150160207978
For Atty General, battle over gun control nothing new
In the fall of 1988, Maryland
Attorney General J. Joseph
Curran Jr. ventured into gun
country in St. Mary's County
with an unpopular message.
Delivering a speech he would
make countless times that
fall, Curran tried to sell a
mostly hostile audience on
the state's ban on Saturday
night special weapons,
passed that year by the
General Assembly but still
needing ratification by the
voters.
"They were hooting at Joe. He got a lot of catcalls and all the
rest," recalled Vincent DeMarco, a former assistant attorney
general who was with Curran that night.
"But he stood his ground," DeMarco said, "and made a good case and
convinced some people. Not everyone -- but there will always be
some unconvincibles."
For Curran, 68, battling the "unconvincibles" over gun control has
been a passion for more than 30 years.
Yesterday, he took the debate to a new extreme with his call for
stricter gun-control laws, including an eventual ban on the
private ownership of handguns.
Curran became one of a tiny number of elected officials around
the country favoring such a ban -- prompting sharp criticism from
pro-gun advocates and polite disagreements with his usual allies
on gun control who suggest Curran has gone too far.
"I think at this time, it's a nonstarter," Gov. Parris N. Glendening
said bluntly. "We've got to be realistic."
Somewhat obscured by the uproar over the handgun ban proposal
was Curran's 58-page report -- called "A Farewell to Arms" --
that lays out a sweeping state and federal agenda for ending
America's "culture of guns."
In the report, Curran proposed changes that would give Maryland
the toughest gun laws in the nation -- such as providing police
powers to investigate illegal gun purchases and putting
significant restrictions on a person seeking a gun permit.
"Imagine an inner city where mothers no longer keep children
from playing outside for fear of drive-by shootings," Curran wrote
in his report. "As a grandfather, I am ready to say enough children
have died."
That kind of idealistic sentiment built around proposals such as a
handgun ban might be politically untenable in the Maryland of
1999, but it is vintage Curran, his admirers say.
"Joe Curran deeply believes that government must do all it can to
protect society, and particularly children, from the scourges of
guns and tobacco," said DeMarco, who has lobbied with Curran in
Annapolis on both issues. "There's no other way to explain it."
But gun-rights advocates do have another way.
"He's an elitist, plain and simple," said John Josselyn, lobbyist for
the Associated Gun Clubs of Baltimore.
"He is now advocating the destruction of the Constitution,"
Josselyn added. "Therefore he is no longer fit to hold office."
Curran was no stranger to guns when he was first elected to the
legislature in 1958, having handled a .45-caliber handgun and an
M-1 rifle in the Air Force.
But as a legislator, he said it was clear to him that gun-control
advocates had better arguments than their opponents. In the
1960s and 1970s, he said, he became dismayed by the steady
increase of violent crime in Baltimore.
"I just became more and more convinced that less is better when
it comes to guns," said Curran, who is in his 13th year as attorney
general and his 41st in public service.
During that time, Curran had a hand in passing all of the state's
gun-control laws, beginning in 1966 with a landmark measure
that licensed gun dealers and made a seven-day waiting period
before the purchase of a weapon mandatory.
In 1972, Curran was head of the Senate committee that handled a
bill putting tough restrictions on people seeking permits to carry
handguns in public.
His feelings about guns were only buttressed four years later,
when his father, Councilman J. Joseph Curran Sr., suffered a heart
attack brought on by a man who fired at him with a handgun in
Baltimore City Hall during a spree that killed a city councilman
and wounded four other people.
"Here was an unstable man who had a gun," Curran said. "How could
that happen?"
Curran said his father, a city councilman for 20 years, never
really recovered from the heart attack. He died 11 months after
the shooting.
"If he didn't have a gun, I might still have a father," Curran said.
In the mid-1980s, Curran, then lieutenant governor, led the
opposition to a group seeking to undo a court decision that
allowed lawsuits against gun manufacturers.
He left perhaps his biggest mark in 1988, when, as attorney
general, he was the impetus behind the ban on Saturday night
specials.
Curran lobbied heavily for the measure and dispatched DeMarco
from his office to the legislative trenches every day.
Despite being outspent 10-to-1 during the ensuing referendum
campaign, Curran and other state leaders secured an
overwhelming victory for the ban on Election Day, making
Maryland the first state to enact such a law.
He notes with wistfulness that at least one of the proposals he
presented yesterday -- requiring a much more rigorous procedure
for gun licensing -- is one he first made in 1972.
"You just keep trying," Curran said.
Curran took a modest step backward yesterday, saying that while
he favors a ban on private ownership of handguns, he is not calling
for Americans to turn in their guns.
"The reality is there are 75 million guns in America today," he
said during a news conference at Maryland Shock Trauma Center in
Baltimore. "There is no way you can disgorge them."
Standing next to more than a dozen handguns seized by police and
displayed on two hospital gurneys, Curran acknowledged his
critics.
"For those who oppose this, I challenge them to have a better idea
to save 35,000 lives," Curran said, referring to the nation's annual
toll from guns.
Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, who served on a
legislative committee headed by Curran 25 years ago, called the
mild-mannered attorney general a "man of the people."
Curran, he said, has an idealistic streak that would have served
him equally well in a different calling.
"My take on Joe is that he has the makings of a Catholic priest,"
Miller said. "He's a very thoughtful person, very true to his beliefs
-- and always a bit preachy."
Originally published on Oct 21 1999
[This message has been edited by Covert Mission (edited October 22, 1999).]