A License to Kill

In the United States, people have to have a license to drive a car or serve liquor in a restaurant. People need a license to cut hair or fish. They should need a license to own a gun.

Gun licensing—along with registration—encourages gun owners to act responsibly and significantly reduces the trafficking of illegal guns. Research has consistently shown that a robust licensing process, which requires a prospective gun owner to visit a local law enforcement authority and complete a background check, keeps us all safer and is essential to building peaceful, gun-free communities.

A study of firearm-related homicides in Connecticut found that the rate “dropped 40 percent after the state adopted a 1995 law that required anyone seeking to buy a handgun to apply for a permit with the local police, complete at least eight hours of safety training, and be 21 years old.”¹

Conversely, after Missouri repealed its licensing law in 2007, gun homicides increased. Individuals no longer had to apply for a permit in person at their local sheriff’s office to legally possess a firearm, whether they purchased it from a dealer who had a federal license to sell guns or an individual online.

Immediately after repeal, researchers discovered a substantial increase in gun trafficking and “a sharp increase in the percentage of crime guns recovered by police in Missouri that had been originally sold by in-state retailers.”² Tragically, the state also saw an increase in the annual firearm homicide rate of 23 percent. Researchers noted that this occurred only for homicides committed with firearms and that a similar spike in firearm deaths did not occur nationally or in states bordering Missouri. Prior to repeal, few guns originating in Missouri had ended up at crime scenes in other states, but after the state did away with the licensing requirement, the number of guns recovered by police in the neighboring states of Iowa and Illinois increased by 37 percent. This trend held even as researchers “controlled for changes in unemployment, poverty, policing levels, incarceration rates, trends in crime reflected in burglary rates, national trends in homicide rates, and several kinds of other laws that could affect homicides.”

The newest research on gun licensing, published in the Journal of Urban Health in May 2018, showed something more startling: comprehensive background-check laws without a licensing system do not appear to decrease firearm homicides. The reasons are fairly obvious. The physical process of obtaining a permit (getting yourself to a law enforcement office, the extended waiting period, the more comprehensive background check) deters bad actors from obtaining firearms.

Without a licensing system, background checks are conducted at the point of sale and are usually less exhaustive, using only a limited number of databases. Even though the overwhelming majority of firearms dealers are responsible, that makes it easier for one to paper over a background check or let a prohibited purchaser buy a firearm. Sellers have a financial incentive to make a sale, and they lack the training to spot fake documents. A government study found that federally licensed gun dealers failed to spot fake IDs from six states, never once questioning their authenticity.³

In 2018, ten states required individuals to obtain a license before buying certain firearms and three states required a license to legally own any firearm. Each has different rules, but there are some common denominators. The experiences in these states should serve as a template for designing a federal system.

1. Prospective gun owners should have to visit a law enforcement office and undergo a background check. Law enforcement agencies can access a wider array of databases than gun shops to determine if someone is in a prohibited category, and they can take more time to conduct a more robust check. A longer timetable is essential to identify people in crisis and thus reduce the rate of suicide by firearm. Individuals who are convicted of violent crimes, have multiple convictions over a short period of time, or have restraining orders placed against them by a domestic partner should be prohibited from owning a firearm.

2. Prospective gun owners who apply for a license should be fingerprinted. This requirement would help reduce sales to people buying for others (prohibited individuals).

3. Prospective gun owners should be required to complete a robust hands-on training course in firearms use and safety and pass a written test about the relevant laws. Under the New Second Amendment Compact, the federal government would provide grants to states for training and examinations.

4. Law enforcement officials should have discretion to deny permits to individuals who they believe could be dangerous or who attract a great deal of police activity for one reason or another. In fact, states that allow law enforcement discretion in licensing have 76 percent lower per capita rates of firearms exports to criminals in other states; states that do not allow such discretion but do require fingerprints had 45 percent lower rates.⁴ To ensure that this discretion is not abused or differentially applied in a discriminatory manner, individuals should be able to appeal denials through the court system.

5. Federal gun licenses should be required to be renewed every five years to ensure that licensees are still eligible to own firearms.

6. An owner should be required to register the firearm, report its theft or loss, and store it safely.

Safe storage of guns is essential. When guns are stored without locks or are out in the open, the chance of an accidental, unintentional, or impulsive shooting or a suicide increases dramatically. Unsecured guns are also much more likely to be stolen, sold on the black market, and found at crime scenes.

One 2018 study found that 4.6 million minors live in households with a loaded, unlocked gun. Another concluded that 55 percent of homes that have both firearms and children store their firearms in an unlocked place. Even worse, 43 percent do not have any kind of trigger lock on that firearm.⁵

All of these conditions result in tragedy. Minors who have access to unlocked and unstored firearms are at higher risk for suicide, unintentional injuries, and intentional violence. A government report from 2004 found that, of the school shootings studied, 65 percent were perpetrated by a shooter who got the gun from his home or from a relative’s home. (I use the word his advisedly here. A table of U.S. mass shootings from 1982 to 2018 shows ninety-eight by males, two by females, and one by a male-female team.⁶) The Department of Education found that “during the 2009–10 school year, one in every 30 K–12 schools took serious disciplinary action against at least one student for use or possession of a firearm on school property.”⁷

These numbers are dramatic, but they can be easily reduced. According to one study, states that require that handguns be locked up when not in use experience 68 percent fewer firearm suicides per capita than states that do not. Other researchers estimated that almost one-third of all accidental firearm deaths could be prevented if manufacturers were required to supply and owners were to use a childproof safety lock or a loading indicator that shows when the weapon is loaded with live ammunition.

Massachusetts is the only state that generally requires firearms to be stored with a lock in place, and it has significantly lower rates of gun deaths than other states as a result. Nationally, 39 percent of youths who commit suicide use guns; in Massachusetts, that number is just 9 percent.

California, Connecticut, and New York all impose safe-storage requirements in certain situations, and all have “40 percent fewer suicides per capita and 68 percent fewer firearm suicides per capita than states without these laws. This correlation is unchanged even after controlling for the effects of poverty, population density, age, education, and race/ethnicity.”⁸ With numbers like these, is there any reason we would not require any federal licensing law to follow the model set out by these four?

Individuals with federal licenses to own firearms should be able to upgrade their licenses to carry their firearms outside the home. Carrying concealed firearms in public creates a heightened level of risk and should require additional responsibilities. In urban areas, concealed carry is associated with a 14 percent increase in firearm homicides, so gun owners who wish to carry weapons outside the home should have to pass additional field and safety tests to receive this special certification.⁹ If they do, they should be able to carry concealed firearms anywhere in the country.

Currently, states have different rules and standards for concealed-carry permits. Some require background checks and training; others do not require anything at all.

The NRA is working to make things even worse. It is advancing “concealed carry reciprocity,” which would require all states to recognize the concealed-carry permits of every other state. Under this scheme, a state like New York, which has very stringent requirements for receiving a permit—you must be of good moral character and demonstrate proper cause but can still be denied a permit by the issuing officer—would have to honor permits from a state like Idaho. In Idaho, almost any person who is at least eighteen years old can carry a concealed weapon, no questions asked. Since studies have found that weak permitting rules increase violent crime by 13 to 15 percent, residents in states with tougher rules worry that inviting armed out-of-staters would put them in harm’s way. Police departments and police associations also oppose this NRA proposal, arguing that it endangers their lives and would make it difficult for a police officer to identify individuals carrying unlawfully.

We must prevent a race to the bottom and set a solid federal floor, for both the ownership license and the concealed-carry supplement. Individuals with these federal documents would be able to own and/or carry their weapon anywhere in the United States. However, states that wish to adopt even tougher standards to meet their unique needs should be free to do so. If a state like Massachusetts adopts tougher standards than the national floor, it would still recognize out-of-state licenses that meet the federal rules. Massachusetts residents, however, would have to fulfill the additional state requirements to receive a license in the state.

Gun licensing is so common sense that 70 percent of Americans believe that a gun licensing system already exists. This is an easy one.