Last week, Republican state representatives passed a package of “dangerous” and “negligent” laws out of committee that, among other things, would allow untrained civilians to carry concealed firearms in public. The bills would also do away with gun-free zones and make it legal to pack a firearm in places like hospitals and churches.
Current Michigan law allows firearms owners to openly carry their weapons in public without completing any training at all. When it comes to concealed carry licenses, Michigan is a “shall issue” state that doesn’t allow local police agencies discretion to deny a concealed carry permit to persons the agencies feel may be dangerous. According to an August report by the Detroit Free Press, more than 660,000 Michiganders currently have concealed carry permits, a number that has increased by almost 50% in just five years.
The latest Republican move seems designed to allow anyone who can buy a gun—even people who have been able to evade background checks by purchasing the weapon at a gun show or receiving it as a gift—to carry and potentially use that weapon in public.
According to an Oct. 22 MLive report on the move, all of the Republicans on the House Military, Veterans and Homeland Security Committee voted to make Michigan a more dangerous place to live. One Democrat on the committee, state Rep. Mari Manoogian, voted against the bills. The committee’s other three Democrats, Jewell Jones, John Chirkun, and Tyrone Carter, chose not to vote.
Rep. Manoogian didn’t respond to Daily Kos requests for an interview but two firearms experts did, and both had strong objections to the proposed legislation. As it is, the current level of training required for a concealed carry permit (an eight-hour class with just four hours of range time) doesn’t do enough to prepare a gun owner to carry their weapon in public safely.
According to veteran gun safety instructor Jonathan Gold, gun safety training needs to go way beyond being able to pull a trigger. “You have to know how to draw the weapon. You have to know how to aim. You have to train your reflexes. If your weapon has a safety, you have to train how to get that disengaged before you fire. And all of that has to happen in a split second, and you're not going to learn that in a four-hour class,” said Gold, who has 25 years’ experience as a gun safety instructor and is currently an activist with Moms Demand Action.
Doing away with this requirement, as the bills propose, is “extremely dangerous. It is negligent,” Gold added.
David Chipman, a former ATF officer and official who was on the job for 25 years and now works as a senior policy adviser for the Giffords Law Center, said the bills would make Michigan “more dangerous.” That assertion is backed up by the data.
According to the Giffords Law Center, states with weak permitting laws have violent crime rates 13%-15% higher than states with stricter laws. States with weak concealed-carry permitting laws also have an 11% higher rate of homicide by gun.
More violent crime and an increased homicide rate aren’t the only dangers associated with lax public carry laws. According to Giffords’ review of the available research, people who carried firearms at least once in a month-long period were three times more likely to have that gun stolen than other gun owners, and there is evidence that loosening carry laws leads to more unintentional firearm injuries.
Chipman explained that the current push to do away with common-sense training regulations is part of a “myth” promoted by gun companies. “They're selling this myth that if you walk into a store and you can lawfully buy a gun you're ready for game time,” Chipman explained to Daily Kos. “And that's as ludicrous as some golf club company selling me a Tiger Woods golf set and somehow I think I'm gonna win the Masters. The gun is a tool, and it’s only as good as your training” added Chipman, who among other positions served on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ SWAT team.
According to a spokesperson for the Michigan State Police, the agency is against the bills. “The MSP is opposed to this bill package because it removes the requirement for a person to disclose during a traffic stop that they are carrying a concealed firearm,” Shanon Banner told Daily Kos in an Oct. 30 email. “Additionally, it removes the training requirement and also eliminates the state’s ability to receive notifications if a permit holder commits a criminal offense that is statutory disqualifying offense for being able to carry concealed.”
Nationwide, Michigan’s current requirements for carrying a deadly weapon in public, whether openly or concealed, may be overly weak, but they are also fairly standard. The Giffords Law Center’s Chipman has a concealed carry permit in Virginia. To qualify, he said, he only had to pass a multiple-choice online test. “You never even have to touch a gun” before being licensed to conceal carry it in Virginia, he said.
At the other end of the training-requirement scale, the Giffords Law Center says Delaware’s training requirements “help ensure that only highly trained individuals are allowed to carry concealed firearms in public areas.” In addition to range time and “identification of ways to develop and maintain firearm-shooting skills,” Delaware requires would-be public gunslingers to receive training in how to avoid criminal attacks and how to manage violent confrontations.
Stop ‘dangerous’ and ‘negligent’ gun legislation from coming to a vote in Michigan’s legislature
Michigan House Bills 4770 and 4771 would allow people with no training at all to carry concealed carry firearms in Michigan—and also make it possible for people to take guns into currently “gun-free” zones like churches and hospitals. These bills have currently made it out of committee. Contact Michigan’s Republican leadership today and insist they never come to a vote:
House Speaker Lee Chatfield: (517) 373-2629 or LeeChatfield@house.mi.gov
Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey: (517) 373-5932
Dawn Wolfe is a freelance writer and journalist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This post was written and reported through our Daily Kos freelance program.