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View Full Version : Operation Backfire: How New Gun Regs Pushed Me Into Getting A Concealed-Carry Permit




tangent4ronpaul
06-02-2013, 04:30 AM
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2013/05/31/operation-backfire-how-new-gun-regs-pushed-me-into-getting-a-concealed-carry-permit/?google_editors_picks=true

I never planned on getting a permit to carry a concealed weapon. The state of Connecticut nudged me into it, by making it illegal to buy shotgun shells down at my local Wal-Mart without a license.

And so far, navigating some of the nation’s strictest gun regulations to get the most expansive permit possible has been surprisingly easy, albeit expensive. The hard part may lay ahead: With thousands of concealed-carry permits working their way through state and local police departments, the bureaucracy is struggling to get the paperwork done.

Let me be clear: Assuming I get a permit, I doubt I’ll use it for its intended purpose, which is to go out in public with a pistol hidden under my clothing. I spent too long down South, where you have to assume there’s a gun in every glove compartment and the cops don’t hesitate to shoot first when they think somebody is armed. The risk of getting killed because I’m packing heat probably exceeds any benefit I’d get from carrying a sidearm.

But Connecticut lawmakers unintentionally made the concealed-carry permit the most attractive alternative after they passed a strict new gun law in the wake of the Newtown school massacre earlier this year. Few if any provisions in the law would have stopped Adam Lanza from stealing guns from his mother, a licensed owner, and using them to kill 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Connecticut’s new law will make it significantly harder for hunters and recreational shooters like me to buy guns and ammunition, however, by requiring a “long gun eligibility certificate” for rifles and shotguns and an “ammunition eligibility certificate” to buy ammo.

For years, I’ve just gone to my local Wal-Mart or sporting goods store to buy ammo to plink away at cans, hunt ducks or shoot clay pigeons in the back woods. Now the state has thrown a roadblock in my way – a $35 certificate that requires a background check and expires every five years. The long gun certificate – also $35, with a five-year term – covers long guns and ammo. So if I ever wanted to buy a nice Beretta A400 Xtreme for coastal duck hunting and a case of 12-gauge steel shot shells, I’d want the combo certificate.

But both certificates are trumped by the concealed-carry permit, which allows holders to buy guns and ammo, and carry a pistol off their own property without risking a felony arrest. So it makes sense to skip the certificates and go straight to the pistol permit, even if the words “concealed carry” seem faintly menacing — even to an experienced gun owner.

Turns out, I’m not the only one to reach this conclusion.

Pistol permits have surged in popularity as fears of an Obama administration crackdown have driven tens of thousands of people to seek licenses as protection against further restrictions on their right to buy and use guns. The state issued 12,000 permits in 2011, up from 5,000 six years before. What used to be a several-week process has lengthened to more than two months, according to the Connecticut Citizens Defense League, a gun-rights organization, even though state law has a 60-day limit.

The Connecticut State Police currently have a backlog of 4,800 concealed-carry applications that officers are going through at a rate of 250 a day, according to police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance. (An officer has to examine the electronic fingerprints associated with each application against the national criminal database, a process that hasn’t been automated in Connecticut.) There are at least 100 applications sitting on the desk of the detective assigned to review applications in my shoreline town.

State records show how popular concealed-carry permits are, compared with certificates of eligibility. Connecticut had 179,092 concealed-carry pistol permits at the end of 2012, representing about 6.4% of the state’s adult population. Certificates to buy a handgun, but not to carry it? Exactly 57.

So with no intention of carrying a handgun in public, I found myself pursuing a concealed-carry license.

Here’s how it works: First you must take a gun-safety course from an accredited instructor.

I went to the local pistol range, owned by a former worker at the Mossberg & Sons factory in North Haven. Family-owned Mossberg is one of the few survivors of a once-thriving community of gun manufacturers like Colt Arms and Winchester that helped establish Connecticut as a manufacturing powerhouse in the 19th century.

The class began at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning. The range has a large human target as you walk in marked, “these targets are not allowed.” I don’t know if the note is ironic.

I went into a cluttered store area stocked with pistols, rifles and ammunition. A prominent sign noted that ammunition would only be sold for use at the range. A nationwide shortage, driven by fears of post-Newtown restrictions like the ones in Connecticut, has made it difficult to buy ammunition in bulk.

Milling around in the office were a mother and her adult daughter, a pair of men from an affluent nearby town, an older retailer from New Haven, a young Asian man and a couple in their late 40s. They were getting their pistol licenses following the purchase of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. “This is all my wife’s idea, she’s going through a midlife crisis,” said the husband, a sandy-haired, rotund fellow.

The instructor took us to a tiny classroom above the store where we crammed ourselves into school-style chairs. He opened a small plastic case and pulled out a surprisingly large collection of weapons, placing each one on the table at the front of the room. There were three revolvers and three semiautomatics, including a “European style” gun that looked like a silver Luger.

The gun instructor spent the first hour discussing the paperwork, in a thick Connecticut Italian accent. Under the Connecticut system, local police first must approve a pistol permit, and then state police and the FBI vet it for criminal violations. Most of the rejections come at the hands of local police, who tend to possess a lot of knowledge about people that has never risen to the level of courtroom evidence.

The instructor had an example for nearly every reason the local or state police might kick back an application, and explained how a review board would reverse 60% of those decisions. One customer was denied a pistol permit because he’d gotten into a fistfight with his sister’s boyfriend on the front lawn of his mother’s house on Thanksgiving Day. “Just fists, nothin’ exciting, just fightin’ in the lawn,” the instructor said. “I mean, I could see if it involved a weapon, but they were just going out of their way to deny him his permit.” The appeals board overruled, although I found myself sympathizing with the local police.

After two hours on the paperwork, the instructor started on the guns. He explained how the revolvers worked and the difference between single and double-action mechanisms. (One requires the shooter to cock the hammer with each shot, while the other can be fired with a simple pull on the trigger. In both cases the pressure required to squeeze off a shot is surprisingly high, up to 12 pounds.) He explained the difference between rimfire ammunition (the hammer sets off the gunpowder by hitting an explosive primer contained in the rim) and centerfire ammo, where the primer is in a capsule at the center of the cartridge.

Three hours into the class, the black-haired mother raised her hand and said “I’d like to ask a really stupid question. What part of the bullet comes out of the gun?”

The instructor patiently explained how the gunpowder contained in the brass shell casing causes an explosion that sends the lead bullet out of the barrel.

Next we went through the basics on semiautomatics. The problem with semiautomatic weapons is it’s not entirely clear whether the gun is empty unless you perform two steps, preferably in order. First, eject the magazine – a spring-loaded metal box in the pistol’s handle – then work the action to make sure there isn’t a bullet hiding inside. A car is an equally deadly piece of machinery in the hands of the untrained user, but the compact size and killing power of a semiautomatic pistol makes it seem more dangerous.

Even the instructor was uncertain about some of the laws covering handguns. Was it legal to bring a pistol to the range without a license, if the gun was unloaded, with the clip separate from the gun? Probably not, the instructor said, although he wasn’t absolutely sure. The General Assembly also outlawed high-capacity magazines, but it grandfathered existing ones and it wasn’t clear where you could use them, or whether it was illegal in all cases to load them with more than 10 rounds. In a strange but pleasant quirk, a lever-action .22 can still carry more than 10 rounds.

After another hour of instruction, we went down to the gun range to fire the mandated six live rounds out of a pistol. I was handed a .22 revolver and aimed at a target hanging suspended about 15 feet down range. It was sighted in perfectly; I put all six shots into the bulls eye.

Armed with my certificate of handgun proficiency, a notarized, three-page application and cashier’s checks totaling $136.50 made out to the city and the State of Connecticut, I went to the local police station to turn in my paperwork.

The police officer behind a bulletproof glass window looked discouraged. “Pistol license?” he said. “Everything notarized?”

“I’m ready to go,” I said.

“Have a seat, I’ll see if I can call in a car. It’s one of those days.”

The police sergeant arrived 15 minutes later. Smiling, he took my folder with documents and walked me back to the holding cells, through a door saying “No weapons beyond this point.” He had a Taser and a .45 strapped to his hip.

We made small talk as he checked my paperwork and filled out the form for the local police. I said I was getting my permit mainly to buy ammunition. The state was crazy to have three different licenses, I said. “I know,” he said. “They don’t think about what they’re doing, they just react.”

I asked him whether the instructor was right about needing a permit to transport a pistol to the gun range. “I don’t think so,” he said. “As long as you keep the gun and the magazine separate.”

Once my paperwork was in order, he checked me out on the computer and then had me step up to the fingerprint screen. Thumbs first, then all four fingers. The thumbs and index fingers individually on a closeup screen, rolling each finger to get a thorough print. I asked if they stayed with the local police. “Nope. These go to the state and the FBI.”

Gun-rights groups say the various bureaucracies that process gun permits each blame each other for delays. But the initial roadblock is clearly in the local police station. With 100 permit applications from law-abiding suburban residents like me to go through, each one requiring a background check and potentially some door-knocking visits to the neighbors, the single detective assigned to this task is going to take a while. I don’t count on seeing my permit before the ammo law kicks in in October.

-t

aGameOfThrones
06-02-2013, 05:30 AM
Three hours into the class, the black-haired mother raised her hand and said “I’d like to ask a really stupid question. What part of the bullet comes out of the gun?”

Called it.