February 2, 2000

Our initial reaction to President Clinton’s idea of licensing handgun owners in very much the same way state governments license automobile drivers is something like ‘Oh, great! A DMV for gun owners. That will be popular.’

In California, however, it’s not just a theoretical matter. The state Legislature has a handgun owner licensing bill in play, and it doesn’t take much study to conclude that licensing handgun owners would create a set of laws and a bureaucracy much worse than the Department of Motor Vehicles.

If you forget to re-register your vehicle, for example, it isn’t subject to confiscation. If you possess and use a vehicle only on private property, not on government roads (as some ranchers do) you have the option of not registering it with the state. In fact, you don’t need a government license to drive a car on private property.

If you get a license and register an automobile, you don’t have to wait up to 45 days to take possession of it and use it.

Under AB 1607, which was introduced by San Francisco Democratic Assemblyman Kevin Shelly last year, all the above restrictions and more would be placed on the owners of handguns. AB 1607 has been put on the ‘suspense file’ in the Assembly Appropriations Committee, but it could be revived this year.

California has required that handguns be registered with the state since 1917. AB 1607 would require anyone who wants to buy a conceal-able gun to get a license from the Department of Justice after taking a firearms safety course and passing a proficiency test, getting a thumbprint and a passport-style photo (at one’s own expense) and paying fees both to local law enforcement and the state. The cost of all this (excluding the photo and thumbprint) would be about $75.

Then each licensee would be required to pay a new $25 registration fee for the handgun purchased, and a new registration fee of $25 for each other handgun already owned (up to a maximum of $125). That registration would have to be renewed every year from then on – at the same price. Whether that annual registration charge would be a tax (which requires a 2/3 vote in the Legislature) or a fee would no doubt be subject to litigation.

If you fail to pay the re-registration (or just miss a deadline) your license to own could be revoked and your handgun(s) subject to confiscation.

The Appropriations Committee estimated that it would cost about $27 million a year (exclusive of set-up costs) to run such a system if only 500,000 handguns (a fraction of the number owned in California) were registered. The fees, high as they are, would cover only a fraction of the costs. Local law enforcement agencies would have to run the program, which would probably cost more than the $12 per license they would be authorized to collect.

So handgun owner licensing would be an expensive, intrusive program that would create huge hassles for thousands of Californians. The major result would be to create thousands of unintentional lawbreakers and more petty crimes for local law enforcement to worry about.

The evidence that such a bureaucratic nightmare would actually reduce crime or even gun-related violence is non-existent. (Massachusetts has had a relatively simple pistol permit scheme since the 1970s and crime has gone up and down since then; the permit system has had no discernible impact.)

AB 1607 is in legislative limbo, in part because Gov. Davis has let it be known he’s not favorably inclined toward new gun laws and in part because it doesn’t poll well. President Clinton’s licensing idea might catch fire and lead to federal legislation, though it seems unlikely in an election year. But these are the kinds of ideas the gun controllers are seeking, the surprising details one finds behind the innocent-sounding soundbites.