Gun Permit Requests Rise in New York Before Law Takes Effect
Starting next month, applicants must take 16 hours of training and have social-media posts reviewed
Thousands of people across New York state are rushing to apply for concealed-weapons permits before a new state law that requires in-person training and a review of social-media accounts takes effect Thursday.
The number of people getting fingerprinted for background checks associated with pistol permits in the state this month has nearly tripled from August 2021 levels so far, according to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services.
New York lawmakers passed the new law barely a week after the U.S. Supreme Court in June invalidated the state’s prior permitting rules, which required that applicants demonstrate “proper cause” and “good moral character.” The court ruled that local officials had too much discretion to deny permits, in violation of the Second Amendment.
The law requires 16 hours of in-person training, including two hours of live-fire drills. People must disclose all social-media accounts used in the past three years, which will be reviewed by investigators who must determine whether an applicant has “the essential character, temperament and judgment necessary to be entrusted with a weapon and to use it only in a manner that does not endanger oneself or others.”
Republicans and gun-rights advocates said the new requirements are onerous.
Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul has said the new social-media checks are analogous to interviews with an applicant’s neighbors. The law also prohibits the possession of weapons in a list of “sensitive places,” which include parks, day-care centers, government buildings and Manhattan’s Times Square.
There are several lawsuits challenging aspects of the law, including one filed by the Gun Owners of America, a gun-rights advocacy group. A federal judge in Syracuse heard arguments Tuesday about whether to issue an injunction that could prevent the new requirements from taking effect.
Meanwhile, New York’s gun-permitting laws are currently less restrictive than they have been in many years, though still not as loose as in states with leaders who support gun rights.
Until Sept. 1, applicants must pass a criminal-background check and provide references, but don’t have to provide a reason why they want a pistol permit. The vetting process can still take several months.
Joe Jastrzemski is the county clerk in Niagara County, in the northwestern corner of the state. The Republican has been urging local residents to apply for gun permits now because he believes the law taking effect Sept. 1 is burdensome on Second Amendment rights. He said seven hundred people have applied for permits since he issued an Aug. 15 press release encouraging people to do so, compared with 1,429 applications in all of 2021.
Mr. Jastrzemski said there were 80 people in line Thursday before the doors opened at 9 a.m. He started turning applicants away at noon because they couldn’t be processed before the end of the day.
“I had a guy standing in line at 5 o’clock this morning waiting for the doors to open,” he said. “There are a lot of upset people out there.”
Andrea Fitchlee, who bought her first rifle last year, changed her work schedule so she could spend six hours waiting in line Thursday to submit a pistol-permit application in Niagara County.
“We’re trying to get it while we still can, short of moving out of New York state,” she said.
There are usually surges in applications following court rulings or changes to law, said David Pucino, deputy chief counsel for the Giffords Law Center, a gun-control group.
In New York, concealed-weapons permits are processed locally by New York City and the state’s counties.
Local officials said they are seeing additional activity from people seeking to upgrade restricted pistol permits—which allow for possession at home or for target shooting—to a “fully carry” permit. Officials in Rensselaer County, the home of the two plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case, developed a one-page application form for such upgrades, County Clerk Frank Merola said.
“People are trying to get through the pipe,” he said as he walked past shelves in his Troy office holding the county’s roughly 10,000 active pistol permits.
An average of 90 applications for upgrades have been processed each day since July, Mr. Merola said. Each permit amendment must be considered and approved by a local judge.
Westchester County officials processed 733 such amendments in July, compared with 28 in the same month last year, according to a spokesman for the county Department of Public Safety. The police in Long Island’s Nassau County received 450 applications for upgrades since the decision was handed down, a spokesman said.
The New York City Police Department declined to release statistics on applications since the Supreme Court ruling. The department updated its regulations Thursday to conform with the new state law and eliminate requirements the Supreme Court struck down, including a “letter of necessity” for why an applicant is seeking a pistol permit.
The Supreme Court ruling in June also called into question similar laws in at least eight other states and the District of Columbia, where authorities hold substantial discretion over issuing concealed-weapons permits. Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey and California are considering legislation to update their firearms laws, while Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, suspended the state’s requirement that permit applicants have “good and substantial reason” for wanting a gun.
The average weekly number of permit applications is 982 so far in 2022, compared with 234 for all of 2021, the Maryland State Police said. In San Francisco, 40 people have applied for pistol permits since the Supreme Court decision, an abnormally high number, according to the sheriff’s office.