How anyone thinks permit-to-purchase laws are constitutional is beyond me. I get thinking they’ll work or thinking they’ll allow the police do their job better or any number of other things that, while stupid, at least sound plausible if you haven’t really looked into gun control’s many, many, many failures. But permit-to-purchase laws are supposedly constitutional, even though we don’t make anyone get a permit to exercise any other constitutionally protected right?
Yeah, I ain’t buying it.
And it looks like they’re the next DOJ target.
On Thursday, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon sent a letter to Governor Tim Walz (D.) and the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul. In it, she said the state’s permit-to-purchase is unconstitutional–at least in the way it’s currently being enforced.
“Minnesota’s licensing scheme imposes unreasonable barriers to residents’ lawful exercise of their right to acquire and bear arms,” she wrote. “Minnesota’s law enforcement officers are charged with enforcing its abusive licensing scheme and actively do so. Such law enforcement misconduct is unlawful.”
As DOJ did in the other Second Amendment litigation it released this week, Dhillon admitted the High Court has OKed some forms of gun permitting. But, as there, she argued Minnesota’s purchase permitting operation is unconstitutionally inefficient.
“In Bruen, the Supreme Court upheld shall-issue permit schemes,” Dhillon wrote. “But the Court immediately cautioned against abusive ‘regimes where . . . lengthy wait times in processing license applications . . . deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry.’”
Dhillon pointed specifically to the lengthy waiting times associated with the state’s gun-buying regulations, especially in its largest cities.
“Waiting periods for approvals from the chiefs of police in St. Paul and Minneapolis commonly exceed the statutory limit of 30 days,” she wrote. “Some citizens have been forced to wait nearly 60 days.”
She further noted the delays aren’t necessarily tied to any additional government investigation or vetting. In fact, she claimed it could actually result in redundant checks that consume even more time.
“These waiting periods apply even if a person has passed a criminal background check under the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS),” Dhillon wrote. “Thus, even if a person has demonstrated that they are not disqualified from possessing a firearm by passing a NICS check, they may not obtain possession of their firearm until the additional state-mandated waiting period has expired.”
In other words, Minnesota isn’t doing anything at all other than throwing up a barrier that also makes the state a few bucks. They’re not doing a more comprehensive background check. They’re not verifying someone’s identity like they would if they were being considered for classified operations for the CIA. They’re just sitting there, redoing the same work done at the gun store, and for what? To keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them, even though that still happens with significant regularity?
For Dhillon to be looking at the state and warning them to get their crap straight, it’s a good thing, but it’ll be better when the lawsuit drops, because this is dumb. Supremely dumb. This is dumb with all the trimmings and then some.
Will it work? Who knows.
What I do know is that with every lawsuit Dhillon’s office files, we get one more reason to turn out not just for the midterms, but to back President Donald Trump’s successor as the Republican nominee and, hopefully, president. We need this to continue, even as the crime rate continues to drop, because then, maybe, the population of this country will wake up to the simple fact that gun control isn’t the answer.
I know, it’s a little idealistic to think they will, but a guy has to have something to dream, doesn’t he?
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