NRA-ILA | Bloomberg’s Concealed Carry Policy Guide Built on Bureaucracy, Not Public Safety

Anti-gun extremist Michael Bloomberg thankfully commands fewer headlines these days. But policy efforts like the latest “Public Carry Permitting Model Policy Guide”  from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health’s Center for Gun Violence Solutions still reflect his pernicious influence. The guide uncritically equates bureaucracy and prior restraints with safeguards, an approach not only divorced from constitutional rights but from common sense and sound crime control policy.

Over and over, these anti-gun “guides” purport to be “evidence informed public health policy” resources for lawmakers and advocates to help “people live free from gun violence”  yet include almost no research or solutions centered on the primary drivers of violent crime or any contributing factors to it such as repeat offenders, nonenforcement of the law, and crime-involved networks operating with impunity. Certainly, they never recognize, much less provide enlightening analysis of, defensive gun use and its role in public safety.

The latest recommendations include a detailed structure for firearm carry permits that include more forms, more fees, more tests, more administrative hurdles, more training mandates, more licensing, and more government discretion (already ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court) in the issuance of carry credentials.

The Center claims to “conduct rigorous research to drive solutions to save lives” yet there is scant evidence of that in the guide’s recommendations. Not addressed in the guide is how these additional requirements comport with the reality that violent criminals routinely ignore permitting laws and other government mandates, such as magazine capacity limits or “gun free zones.”

Instead, the Center’s approach focuses on creating more burdens for ordinary citizens attempting to lawfully exercise their right to self-defense by recommending a host of onerous requirements such as requiring all permit applications to be done in person. Of course, the eligibility for a permit is based on the same background checks and disqualifying records whether an applicant submits the paperwork online, through the mail, or in-person. An additional 100+mile drive for some to their nearest county clerk during work hours will not change the background check outcome. But it may, the guide’s authors manifestly hope, discourage even eligible applicants from applying at all.

Also found in the recommendations is the elimination of temporary emergency permits for people in immediate danger. We’d say that leaving citizens defenseless at the exact moment they face a credible threat to their lives is ignoring a critically dangerous problem, not proposing a solution.

Beyond unsurprisingly opposing all state constitutional carry frameworks, another recommendation is to make permit reciprocity more difficult unless states play by the Center’s own rules. “State law should not grant reciprocity nor allow state officials to enter into reciprocity agreements to recognize valid public carry permits issued by other states unless the permitting process in that state is at least as rigorous as the process outlined in this guide,” the authors counsel.

Missing from the guide, on the other hand, is any of the research or evidence supporting the proposition that lawfully armed civilians enhance public safety rather than endanger others. Recall that almost half of the nation’s state Attorneys General, the chief legal and enforcement officer in the states, submitted a letter to Congress in regard to passage of H.R. 38, the federal Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act stating that “[c]oncealed carry is a constitutional right, and it can have substantial public safety benefits by allowing people the means to respond to emergent threats to themselves or others when police are not immediately available to intervene.” How is that lesson always lost on a supposed “Center for Gun Violence Solutions? 

Then again, not much makes sense with gun control efforts and their “contributions.” Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety, for example, claims to offer a firearm training program, including for those interested in exercising their right to carry.  Yet Everytown simultaneously advocates for making firearm ownership, to say nothing of public carry, as difficult and burdensome as possible. Basically, their branding with this effort is, if we haven’t prevented you from owning a gun, we can at least harangue you about all the reasons you’re endangering yourself and others by persisting in that bad decision. Read more about Everytown’s insincere attempts in NRA-ILA’s previous alerts: Everytown’s Gun “Safety” Course—Step One: Don’t Own a Gun; Everytown Gun “Safety” Course: We Told You So; and Gun Controllers Rage at Everytown Over “Firearms Training,” Demand “Abstinence.”

We have long known that treating public safety as a paperwork problem can only make us less safe. More forms, more bureaucracy, and more government oversight of harmless people has never and will never make citizens safer nor will making lawful carry more expensive, burdensome, discretionary, or inaccessible.

Unfortunately, we anticipate new and continued ways, including those packaged in shiny policy guides, for firearm prohibitionists to try to bamboozle policymakers and the public into accepting greater infringements on the right to keep and bear arms. The fact is people applying for firearm carry permits are not the root of, nor even appreciable contributors to, America’s violent crime problems. No amount of wasted ink or digital data has or ever will prove otherwise.