David Upole carries a handgun.

He lives about three hours west of Annapolis in Garrett County, a small county without a major crime problem.

There are some drugs. Tourists coming through sometimes cause trouble. But he has the right to carry a gun, so he does.

“The way I see it, if I’m at the grocery store and I want to keep my family safe, then I’m going to wear a gun,” Upole said.

Upole is one of more than 200,540 people with a Maryland permit to carry a handgun in public, according to the Maryland State Police.

That’s equivalent to 3% of the state population — but it is more than a fourfold increase from just five years ago. The number dwarfs the number of state and local police officers in Maryland — 20,000 — and is larger than the combined populations of the cities of Columbia, Frederick and Annapolis.

The consequences of the boom are complicated, just like everything else involving guns in America.

“Some of their effects are, you know, not super-straightforward or direct,” said Daniel Webster, a distinguished scholar at Johns Hopkins’ Center for Gun Violence Solutions.

Advocates for loosening Maryland’s gun regulations argue that gun owners are law-abiding citizens. They say guns in the right hands add to public safety.

Opponents argue that more guns result in more gun violence, and that loosening regulations leads to more crime such as gun thefts.

“The complicated truth of the matter is that there’s truth on both sides,” Webster said.

What is clear is that people legally carrying guns on Maryland’s streets are everywhere.

I’ve been writing about guns and how they affect communities for a long time, long before five of my colleagues were murdered in 2018 in the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis.

Yet I can’t think of any change like this one.

In 2020, fewer than 50,000 people in Maryland were licensed to carry handguns. The floodgates opened in 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen that the Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms in public.

Nine states, including Maryland, revamped their rules for wear and carry permits. Maryland’s laws are still more stringent than those in half the states, where no permit is needed to wear a gun in public.

“Maryland did maintain a rigorous review process before permits are issued,” said Jen Pauliukonis, executive director of Maryland’s new Center for Firearm Violence Prevention and Intervention. “These are important and effective ways to reduce gun violence.”

To get a carry permit, gun owners must complete a 16-hour course with live fire exercises, submit a fingerprint for records, have no history of felonies or serious misdemeanors and pay a $75 fee.

My colleague, data reporter Sahana Jayaraman, helped me map Maryland’s new handgun landscape.

Garrett County has the highest concentration of carry permits among the state’s 23 counties and Baltimore City. With only 29,005 residents, those 1,804 permits work out to 6.4% of the population, twice the statewide rate.

It’s a pattern repeated across Maryland. The smallest counties disproportionately have the largest concentrations of guns in public places.

State police figures show that 5% of Calvert, Caroline, Carroll and Queen Anne’s residents can legally carry handguns. Allegany, Cecil, Dorchester, Harford and Worcester counties are almost as well-armed, with 4% of the population licensed to carry.

The number of permits in the most populous counties is proportionally bigger, and the number of guns is greater. You are just less likely to bump into them.

Baltimore County has the most handgun permits, with 29,214. Prince George’s is second, with 25,770.

That’s just 3.4% of the 840,000 people in Baltimore County, and just 2.7% of Prince George’s’ 948,000 residents.

One reason might be political.

In national surveys, Republicans say they are far more likely to own guns than Democrats.

Voters in Maryland’s smallest counties lean right, while the population in Central Maryland overwhelmingly elects Democrats.

Just 1% of Montgomery County’s 1.1 million residents have carry permits. Republicans comprise 14% of its voters. In Howard County, 20% of voters are Republicans and 1.9% of all residents have permits.

It isn’t a perfect explanation. The percentage of gun permits in Prince George’s County is more than twice that of Montgomery, yet Republicans make up just 7% of voters there.

And political views don’t explain the 18,915 out-of-state residents with Maryland permits. Maryland is one of 13 states that do not recognize other states’ permits.

That would change if Congress passes legislation for a national reciprocity standard, likely sending the number of legally armed people on the street skyrocketing again.

If you ask anyone with a carry permit why they wanted it, they quickly cite the constitutional right to bear arms.

“Because I have the right under the Second Amendment,” said Upole, who owns the Sharp Shooters gun shop in Oakland.

Webster said gun buyers often cite fears about a government failure to protect them.

Gun buying jumped after the protests and violence that followed Freddie Gray’s death in Baltimore in 2015 and George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis Police five years later.

It went up after the Jan. 6 insurrection aimed at halting Congress from certifying Joe Biden as winner of the 2020 presidential election.

“Basically, they’re concerned about political violence,” Webster said.

At the new Maryland gun violence center, Pauliukonis’ job is to bring a public health approach to curbing gun violence. The boom in carry permits is a factor.

The majority of permit holders follow the law. Some mistakenly take their guns where they are banned, such as BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport or schools.

Some leave their guns open to theft, contributing to the rise in stolen guns nationwide as states relax regulations.

Others commit crimes.

Pizza delivery driver Brian Delen was carrying his gun legally when got into an altercation with Meghan Lewis, an unarmed trans woman, in a Bel Air parking lot in 2023. He fatally shot her and was sentenced to 10 years in prison for assault.

“It is very clear that states that loosen regulations see a rise in crime,” Pauliukonis said. “It is very important to keep Maryland law in perspective.”