We have been reporting on recent reforms by ATF to make its operations more transparent, professional, and public safety focused and less openly hostile to law abiding gun owners and the industries that serve them. Continuing this trend was the May 23 announcement of revisions to the so-called Brady Permit Chart, which illustrates which firearm-related credentials ATF considers an acceptable alternative to a NICS check for firearm transfers. By our count, there was a net pick-up of three jurisdictions issuing credentials that qualify for this important exception.
A closer look at the chart, moreover, reveals contradictions that undercut anti-gun states’ complaints about how they would be forced to accept the laxer permitting standards of pro-gun jurisdictions, should H.R. 38 or other national reciprocity legislation become law. Indeed, virtually none of the most anti-gun states issue qualifying permits, indicating that it’s actually those states whose permitting standards deserve closer scrutiny.
In general, there is a requirement under federal law that a Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL) run a NICS inquiry any time the FFL transfers a firearm to an unlicensed individual. This requirement does not apply, however, if the transferee presents the FFL with:
a license or permit that …allows such other person to possess or acquire a firearm; … was issued not more than 5 years earlier by the State in which the transfer is to take place; and … the law of the State provides that such a permit is to be issued only after an authorized government official has verified that the information available to such official does not indicate that possession of a firearm by such other person would be in violation of law.
This reflects the commonsense judgement that a person responsible enough to obtain, for example, a concealed carry permit that includes a NICS check should be relieved of the burden of undergoing additional checks when obtaining a firearm within the next five years. Evidence backs this up, as concealed carry permit holders, as a population, have consistently proven themselves to be more law-abiding than the general population.
Yet, as NRA-ILA pointed out in its memorandum to Attorney General Pam Bondi on implementing President Trump’s Executive Order Protecting Second Amendment Rights, ATF had not been complying with the letter or spirit of the NICS Exemption provision:
Almost every state issues concealed carry permits that could potentially qualify for this exemption. Yet ATF’s determinations about which permits do or do not qualify are inconsistent, opaque, and often rely on criteria not explicitly mentioned in the statutory language. This defeats the congressional intent of the license exception. ATF should be required to publish its criteria and to use only the statutory language to guide its decisions. It should also conduct a review of all state concealed carry or other firearm-related licenses or permits to determine if they meet the statutory language.
With its update, ATF appears to have taken NRA-ILA’s feedback seriously. In addition to reviewing the prior list, ATF published an open letter explaining its process for determining which permits qualify. According to that letter:
the laws of the state must provide that the authority issuing the permit is required to check available information, including conducting a NICS background check, and that the issuing authority may not issue a permit to anyone when the available information indicates the applicant is prohibited from possessing firearms under federal, state, or local law.
It also clarified that permits valid for a period of greater than five years can still qualify, so long as no more than five years have expired since the date the permit was issued or renewed. ATF’s latest chart helpfully includes notes on what it considers the deficiencies in the states that do not qualify.
In total, 28 states and Puerto Rico issue qualifying credentials; in almost every case these are concealed carry licenses. By ATF’s standards, this means that the states are running NICS checks before issuance or renewal and that they do not issue permits to individuals prohibited by law.
Ironically, almost all of America’s most stridently anti-gun states and territories do not meet these relatively modest standards, including California, District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York. Yet it is these states that typically protest the loudest about other states’ permitting practices.
Some of these anti-gun states disallow NICS exempt transactions by statute, leading one to wonder if they trust the credentials issued under their own laws. Other of these states failed ATF’s review because officials are empowered in some cases to issue permits to individual who are prohibited under federal law.
Prior “may-issue” states have a long tradition of issuing concealed carry permits as a form of status symbol, regardless of public safety considerations. Indeed, there have been repeated federal corruption cases against licensing officials in New York City, who among other things have been convicted of accepting bribes to issue concealed carry licenses to applicants with violent criminal histories. Meanwhile, “ordinary,” law-abiding citizens who could not distinguish their “need” for a permit from the general public were disqualified.
Theoretically, that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), in which the U.S. Supreme Court invalided New York’s may-issue licensing scheme under the Second Amendment. Yet New York and other may-issue jurisdictions responded to that decision by removing the licensing official’s discretion on the applicant’s “need” for a permit in favor of his or her “suitability” to receive one.
Thus, applicants are subject to unconstitutional requirements like character references, personal interviews, and intrusive and prolonged investigation of their personal lives. In Los Angeles, this process has resulted in delays of over a year in applicants’ receiving a decision on their permits. The situation is so egregious that DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has opened an investigation to determine if the Los Angeles County Sheriff is violating applicants’ Second Amendment rights.
Yet even someone who passes this gauntlet can’t take advantage of the NICS exemption in California. Perhaps this is because the California legislature knows as well as anyone that the point of the process isn’t to determine who is a public safety risk but merely to discourage as many people as possible from even applying in the first place.
Fortunately, Americans now have more opportunities than ever to bypass NICS checks when acquiring firearms at retail, freeing up time for themselves and the busy FFLs that serve them and lowering barriers to the exercise of their rights.
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