I live in Columbia MD which is only about 5 miles from Ft. Meade (I'd say about 20% of the town works in a certain part of Ft. Meade). If you are going to work in the Ft. Meade area I suggest living in MD- either AA county or Columbia MD.
If I want to drive to N. Va it can take me as little as 45min on a Sunday afternoon, but any weekday (and pretty much any time of the day) it will be over an hour and over 2 hours isn't uncommon. At rush hour it will easily take more than 2 hours (and rush hour is pretty much half the day or more in the DC area). Also, in addition to time, gas and wear and tear on the car, consider that as expensive as Central MD is, it is generally less expensive to live here than in N.Va.
As for gun laws, MD is bad but if you are coming from NJ we will seem a great improvement.
The bad:
-CCW is near impossible
-To buy a pistol you need to go through an 8 day waiting period and you need to do a state background check in addition to the fed
-If you want an "assault rifle" it is treated like buying a pistol- 8 day waiting period and state background check
-Private sales of "assault weapons" and pistols are just as regulated as dealer sales- you have to go to a state police barracks for the paperwork and you have to enforce the waiting period.
-20 round mag limit- no 30 round AK mags for you, if you buy them here anyway
-The state police have an approved handgun list, if what you want isn't there you can't have it (new guns take a good 6months or more longer to hit MD shelves)
-You better get gas before going to the range, don't go hungry and use the bathroom before you leave- MD transport law is strict and if you so much as stop for gas or a bathroom or go through the McDonalds drive through you are breaking the law. You can only have guns in your trunk to and from the range with no stops, ammo must be stored seperately (like in the passenger compartment), and for goodness sake don't have loaded mags in your car.
-Every year the legislature tries to ban "assault rifles", but so far they've been failing.
-MD has a built in lock law. It has been weakened by allowing a certain external lock to count but that adds money to guns without a built in lock (the lock is $15-20) and with a new governor that may change since it was a regulatory and not a legislative change.
-There is a "ballistic fingerprint" law so only guns that the manufacturer provides shell casings with the gun are legal (not-applicable on used guns). That means certain guns are unavailable simply because the maker doesn't send them out with a shell casing. Also, it makes online sales of new guns harder because some makers only provide casings to distributors operating in the states that require them (MD and NY).
-We are the home of the headquarters of several national anti-gun groups. They will never stop trying to make MD a laboratory for their ideas so the fight will never let up.
The good:-
-"Assault rifles" are available, and the HBAR ARs don't count as "assault weapons" so you don't even need a waiting period for those. Uppers are completely unrestricted so you could get an HBAR AR, buy another upper and essentially have a MD regulated assault rifle without the wait and still be completely legal.
-Full-auto, silencers, short barrels, .50cal, etc. are all MD legal.
-No waiting period on rifles and shotguns (assuming they don't qualify as "assault rifles")
-Only "voluntary registration". To buy anything state regulated once you are here (handguns and "assault rifles") it will be registered, but any guns you bring into the state when you move won't be subject to registration nor will most rifles and shotguns. Of course, you are more than welcome to bring any handgun purchased out of state before you lived here, or any long gun, to the local state police barracks to register- don't laugh, I've actually seen a person do that when I was there to get the paperwork to do a private handgun sale.
-Private sales of most long guns are unrestricted.
-No ammo restrictions
-The 20 round mag limit is only on sales, not possession. You can go to VA or PA and pick up all the 30 rounders you want.
-While the laws are currently bad, and it is certainly an uphill battle, the pro-gun crowd seems to do a little better every year in Annapolis. I think within a couple years the "ballistic fingerprinting" and built-in lock laws will be gone and the transport restrictions will be a little less draconian. In a little longer I think the approved handgun list might be abandoned. In 5-10 years (and maybe quicker if we are lucky) we may even become a shall-issue CCW state.
