Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is polling poorly in the Democratic presidential race, so he’s trying to grab a little attention – by promising to crack down on guns.

In a piece he wrote for CNN.com, he pledged to reduce “deaths from gun violence in half – homicides, suicides and accidents – within 10 years.”

But will his plan actually do that, without seriously infringing on the Second Amendment and the ability of law-abiding gun owners to protect themselves and their families? No.

The first part of the plan is the old standby, increasing background checks.

“Under my plan, a background check would be required for each and every gun purchase,” he writes. “And every person seeking to purchase or transfer a gun would have to obtain a fingerprint-based license, including completing safety training and a waiting period. Without such protections, it will remain far too easy for criminals to legally buy guns.”

But that means even handing down a cherished family heirloom firearm – Grandpa’s old shotgun – would require fingerprints and federal forms and safety classes and waiting periods. And demanding the same of private sales would be unenforceable. At the end of the day, would criminals find it any harder to obtain guns? Not at all – they’re not going to comply with those laws anyway.

O’Malley also pledges to change how the nation’s biggest purchaser of firearms – the federal government – does its business, ensuring that only “cutting-edge guns, such as those that have hidden serial numbers that cannot be defaced” are bought.

Fine. But his next idea is terrible.

“By establishing a national firearms registry, we can track guns to the root cause of tragedies,” he writes. “By requiring all lost or stolen firearms to be reported to law enforcement, we can monitor the number of illegal guns in our communities.”

Again, these measures will affect only the law-abiding, because what crook is going to march into the local police station and register his gun?

Canada learned this in recent years when it enacted a registry for long guns (rifles and shotguns). The endeavor was an utter failure and was soon ended.

“The program turned out to be far more expensive than expected and didn’t have any discernible impact on crime,” Forbes magazine reported. “The bigger lesson of Canada’s experiment … is that gun registration rarely delivers the results proponents expect.”

O’Malley points to his “success” in regulating guns in Maryland after the Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut in 2013. He says that with his leadership, Maryland legislators enacted “the strongest gun safety laws in the nation.”

But that hasn’t helped reduce crime. In fact, 2015 is on track to be the deadliest year in Baltimore’s history. Over the Memorial Day weekend alone, there were 26 shootings, with nine fatalities.

“Baltimore’s murder count has already surpassed its total from all of last year, and now it has more murders than New York City,” WBAL Television reported in August.

The only thing O’Malley’s proposals would do is make gun ownership more difficult for law-abiding Americans. That’s unacceptable.