Imagine if you had to have a permit to buy a computer. People use the internet to speak freely all the time, after all, and far too many people use that freedom irresponsibly. Surely a permit to purchase the tool used for that makes sense, right?
Well, no, and neither does Washington state trying to do this to another fundamental right.
Anti-gun activists in the state are actually looking to do a lot of things, but their top priority is to require a permit to purchase a firearm at all.
Renee Hopkins, chief executive officer of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility said every Washingtonian deserves to be free from the threat of gun violence. “While we continue to make incredible steps forward, our work is far from over, “ she said.
Establishing a permit-to-purchase program tops the agenda.
As envisioned, a person would apply, be fingerprinted to verify their identity and undergo a background check conducted by the Washington State Patrol. Before getting a permit, they also must present proof of completion of a firearm safety training program and demonstrate the safe handling of, and shooting proficiency with, firearms.
The Alliance also wants the Washington State Patrol to conduct annual eligibility rechecks of permit holders to determine if a person has become prohibited from owning a firearm due to a protection order or conviction of a crime, such as domestic violence.
Several states have permit-to-purchase laws including Oregon, New York, Connecticut, Nebraska and Michigan. Voters in Oregon enacted the rules by passing Ballot Measure 114 in 2022 but it has been on hold due to court challenges.
Hopkins said in a press release that such laws have proven to be “the single most effective policy to save lives and reduce gun violence. All of our work in Washington over the last decade has been leading to this pivotal moment.”
Except, those laws haven't been all that proven.
Sure, there are studies that show just that, particularly with regard to Connecticut's permit-to-purchase law. In fact, over at our sister site Bearing Arms, Cam Edwards talked about just why that Connecticut story is so terrible.
One example that Brown raises is the oft-repeated claim that “gun homicides” dropped by 40% after the state of Connecticut adopted a permit-to-purchase law requiring handgun owners to first receive a gun permit from their local police department. This was breathlessly reported back in 2015 by outlets like the Washington Post and repeated on Democratic debate stages in 2020, but Brown revealed some interesting parts of the study that weren’t widely reported and utterly discount that 40% statistic.
First, the drop in homicides in Connecticut wasn’t based on a comparison between previous years, or the United States as a whole. Instead, researchers crafted a “synthetic Connecticut” comprised of portions of Rhode Island, California, and several other states and compared those homicide totals to Connecticut’s post-permit murder rate. That’s bad enough, but what makes it egregiously worse is that the researcher’s own data showed that the “drop” in Connecticut’s murder rate was short-lived, and that within a few years the gun homicide rate in the real Connecticut was actually more than 40% higher than it was in the synthetic state dreamt up by the academics.
In fact, this kind of chicanery is pretty common among gun studies as a whole. The entire field is ridiculously flawed by scientific standards, and yet we have activists who will cite these "studies" and insist that we create policies based on just those.
Moreover, they completely dismiss that the right to keep and bear arms is just that, a right. Even if gun control worked--and as we see above, not even this "proven" bit actually works--it still infringes on our constitutionally protected gun rights.
And once the gun rights are gone, other rights are up for grabs. Don't believe me? Just look at the UK and try and convince yourself that everything is fine.