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Just under 50% of emergency risk protection order requests are granted

Digging into Maryland gun protection laws
Posted: 3:30 PM, May 26, 2022
Updated: 2022-05-26 18:20:42-04
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BALTIMORE — With the country still reeling in the aftermath of the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook a decade ago, we're taking an in focus look at Maryland's gun protection laws.

Today, we're focusing on a law passed in Maryland in 2018, that allows courts to issue temporary Emergency Risk Protection Orders.

When issued against someone, the person is required to surrender their ammunition or firearms and is not allowed to purchase any ammunition or firearms, according to Maryland Courts.

The court system publishes data on these ERPOs, so we dug into how many ERPO's were filed and granted, both state-wide and in the counties we cover.

Between January 2019 and September 2021 (the most recent data available), 2,162 ERPO cases were filed. In that time, statewide only 1,067 were granted.

That's 49.35% of the ERPOs filed that were granted.

It's a different story when you dig in by county.

These percentages include the totals for the entire time period, between January 2019 and September 2021.

In our coverage area, Anne Arundel County has the highest rate of granting requested ERPOs at nearly 72% where Baltimore City has the lowest rate at about 15.5%.

All the other counties fall between 40-60% of EROs granted.

We can also break down the numbers by month.

You can toggle through the different counties on the right-hand side of the pane.

The instances where the granted ERPOs outnumber the requested ones, are likely from previous months requested ERPOs.