Every gun that Donna Worthy sells at her shop in Millersville comes with a public health message.

It’s from the Anne Arundel County Health Department and includes resources on suicide prevention and conflict resolution.

“We put one in every box that we sell. It’s in the box,” said Worthy, a former Baltimore County Police officer.

If legislation in the General Assembly passes, all 760 Maryland gun dealers will have to do the same.

“The premise is really about public safety,” said Del. Gary Simmons, the bill’s lead sponsor. “You can dress it up, but we’re talking about public safety and public education.”

Like many ideas for change, this one was born out of tragedy.

A man obsessed with my old newspaper bought a shotgun online, picked it up at the Bass Pro in Hanover, plotted a murderous rampage and killed five of my colleagues in June 2018.

Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman and his health officer saw the Capital Gazette shootings as motivation to treat gun violence as a public health crisis.

They set up a task force to study shootings. Gun rights advocates disrupted the meetings and tried to intimidate members, but one of the panel’s ideas was to put alternatives to violence in front of gun owners.

After County Councilwoman Lisa Rodvien won passage of a law requiring dealers to carry the literature, a trade group challenged it in court as a violation of First Amendment protections against forced speech.

Worthy, who owns Worth a Shot in Millersville, was one of four dealers who signed on as plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed by the trade group Maryland Shall Issue.

”It’s not about it being a terrible thing, it’s about a forcible thing,” she said. “It’s about making someone who buys a gun to protect themselves feel like they’re doing something wrong.”

When Maryland’s top court rejected their argument in March 2023, I predicted the idea would spread.

Six months later, Montgomery County Councilman Evan Glass introduced a similar proposal after discussions with constituents whose loved ones had died by suicide. It went into effect in September.

“Good ideas spread quickly,” Glass said. “I’m sure advocates and family members of firearm-related suicide deaths continue to share measures that have an impact.”

Even if the literature helps one person, he would consider that a success.

Simmons, a Brooklyn Park Democrat first elected in 2022, came to the idea through personal experience.

A former military police officer, he responded as a Red Cross volunteer to the July 2023 mass shooting at Brooklyn Homes, where 30 people were shot after a block party just inside the Baltimore line.

Simmons worked with Crystal Gonzales of Severn, whose daughter Aaliyah died in the shooting, the Anne Arundel County task force, and Everytown for Gun Safety to find a response.

Under his bill, the new Maryland Center for Firearm Violence Prevention would work with local health departments.

Dealers who refuse to distribute the materials would face a $500 fine for the first violation. As in Anne Arundel and Montgomery counties, enforcement would be complaint-driven.

“I think there’s always going to be opposition,” Simmons said. ”It’s a matter of public opinion."

During hearings on the proposal, the usual suspects showed up.

“The bill would accomplish nothing,” testified Mark Pennak, president of Maryland Shall Issue, before a House committee. “It has accomplished nothing in Anne Arundel County.“

I asked him how he knew that. Anne Arundel has distributed 88,000 brochures. When the goal is to achieve a “nothing” — preventing death by suicide or homicide — how do you define success or failure?

“The customers are throwing away the literature,” Pennak texted me Saturday. “The ordinance is backfiring.”

Some dealers, he added, suggest to their customers that they throw it away.

“That’s not true,“ Simmons said. ”I even went out myself to a couple of gun shops. I respect the advocates, but we’re talking about lives. There’s never enough measures we can take to ensure someone’s safety when we put a weapon of mass destruction in their hand."

Simmons is hopeful, but his proposal might not pass. New ideas often take a few attempts. There may be amendments.

Jen Pauliukonis, formerly of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, has been named director of the Maryland center created last year. It could be months before its programs get underway.

Pennak threatened another legal challenge, and other opponents dismissed the ideas behind the legislation.

“The idea that gun owners are uniquely in need of this information is laughable,” said Katie Novotny of Aberdeen, an NRA member who’s successfully sued Maryland to thwart other gun safety measures.

I’m not sure who is laughing.

More than a third of all suicides in Maryland involve a gun, and white men over 65 are the most likely to end their lives this way, according to state public health data. Death by suicide makes up a third to half of gun deaths in the state.

That brings me back to my old newspaper.

In June 2006, Capital Gazette Publisher Phil Merrill drove around the corner from what was then his company headquarters in Annapolis and bought a shotgun.

Merrill, whose name adorns the University of Maryland journalism school, was on medication following heart surgery. Depression and suicidal thoughts were common side effects.

He went for a solo sail on his 41-foot boat a few days later and shot himself out in the Chesapeake Bay.

Scott Peterson, a spokesperson for Montgomery County who lives in Severna Park, reminded me that today, signs urging people to call 988 for help in a mental health crisis are common in commercial parking lots.

There’s no way of knowing if a sign would have prevented Merrill’s death, or if a brochure would have given the man who murdered my friends the moment of pause needed to change his fatal course.

I doubt it.

But that’s the thing when you’re trying to accomplish what Pennak dismissed as a “nothing.”

You might not know when you succeed.