Delaware's permit-to-purchase program for firearms is still having troubles getting its computer system up and running and that has produced complaints from gun shop owners. In this excerpt from this week's Delmarva Today host Don Rush talks with Spotlight Delaware reporter Maggie Reynolds about the significance of the delay. The full interview can be heard on this week's Delmarva Today at noon on WSDL and WESM.
RUSH: There's frustration among gun shop owners in Delaware with the delays in the computer system for the gun "permit to purchase" program. This is Don Rush. The firearm transaction approval program has been in the works for 18 months, but has also been the subject of court challenges by gun rights advocates who have been at least initially rebuffed by the courts. In this excerpt from this week's Delmarva Today we talk with Spotlight Delaware reporter Maggie Reynolds, about the significance of the delay.
REYNOLDS: So the way it's been working right now, permit to purchase went into effect in mid-November, and individuals are able to go through the training process due to fingerprinting [and] get the necessary background check. But the computer system that gun shops need to verify that when people come in with a permit, that it's a legitimate permit... is not up and running. So when someone comes into a gun shop with their permit to purchase, in order to verify that permit, the gun shops have to call the state Bureau of Identification and confirm over the phone that it's a valid permit. And so that's just been adding an extra step that gun shop owners are not satisfied with or not happy about, and the state is still working on getting the system up and running so that the gun shops are able to verify it on the computer without involving the state.
RUSH: So what kind of impact has this had in terms of gun sales?
REYNOLDS: The gun shop owners that I talked to said that they've seen a sharp decline in the number of people coming in to purchase firearms. Some shops said about a 65% decrease since mid-November. They did say that typically the months of November and December are lower for firearm sales in general because of the holidays and stuff like that. But those numbers are also consistent with some data that I pulled from the trace, which is a news organization that reports on gun violence related news, [the data] was [also] about a 65% decrease in firearm sales. And yeah, so gun shop owners are definitely concerned about the impacts of that decrease. I spoke with one owner of a shop called Best Shot in Lewes, and she said that she's already been having to cut some employees hours and things like that to cut costs because of the decrease in handgun and other firearm sales. Other shops said that they aren't at that point yet. They're not so worried about their business overall, but definitely there has been decreases in sales for gun shops.
RUSH: On the legal end of this, is there any effort to challenge this in the courts?
REYNOLDS: So I spoke with Jeff Hague, he's the president of the Delaware Sportsman's Association, which is the state NRA affiliate. And so they have already tried a couple of times to challenge the permit to purchase. Legally, they sought a temporary restraining order so that the law would not go into effect 13 days before it was set to go into effect. And a federal judge declined that restraining order in November. But Higg said that his group is still seeking to challenge the constitutionality of permit to purchase in a federal appellate court. And he said that they dispute the constitutionality of the permit to purchase on a number of levels, of course, perhaps most obviously on the violation of a Second Amendment level. But he also said that his group takes issue with it because they see it as discriminatory against people of lower income who might not be able to access the training course or pay for the training course, get a spot in the course. If they don't have a firearm to use for the training course, then they can't buy it because of these rules. And he also thinks they're [in] a long wait list to enroll in the courses. A lot of the training instructors that I spoke to didn't indicate that they've been getting an excess of interest or a wait list for their courses, but Hague said that they're worried about people not being able to access the courses because they're too full.
RUSH: Spotlight Delaware reporter Maggie Reynolds on the computer System delays and the "permit to purchase" program in the first state. The full interview can be heard on this Friday's Delmarva Today at noon on WSDL and WESM.This is Don Rush for Delmarva Public Media.
