CAGW Article: Registration and Licensing of Guns

Coalition Against Gun Violence
PMB 121
1187 Coast Village Road, Ste. 1
Santa Barbara, CA 93108-2794
Phone: 805-564-6803
Fax: 805-568-0466
Email: info@sbcoalition.org

Registration and Licensing of Guns

Originally appeared in two parts in Newsletter Vol. 6, Nos. 1 and 2, Winter and Spring 2000

The Next Gun-Control Goal

California has gone further than any other state to prevent gun tragedies. In January, 2000 four new laws will go into effect: a ban on assault guns and high-capacity magazines, a limit of one gun purchase per month, a requirement that all new guns be sold with trigger locks, and a ban on the sale and manufacture of junk guns. Why do we need to do more? According to the Los Angeles Times (9-5-99) there are an estimated 20 to 30 million guns in California, but no one knows precisely how many there really are or who has them — that's part of the problem. We could enact the most comprehensive gun laws extant but still not stop firearms coming in from other states in trunks of cars or by mail. What else should California do?

Should we move toward licensing gun owners and registering their firearms? Eleven states have some form of licensing, and a handful of others require registration. Only Hawaii requires both. California State Assembymembers Hannah-Beth Jackson and Jack Scott have announced that they will introduce a bill in January requiring a license to purchase all handguns, as well their registration. The licensing portion of the bill will require the licensing of firearms the owner already possesses, as well as those they purchase in the future.

Further, Senator Don Perate (D-Alameda) and Assemblyman Mike Honda (D-San Jose) plan to present bills that would allow police to quickly trace any gun used in a crime and require gun buyers to demonstrate that they can safely store and handle their weapons. California currently requires gun buyers to pass a minimal test or sit through a four-hour video course on gun safety. Gun dealers administer the written test; no hands-on safety training is required, nor must buyers show they can safely load, unload, store or fire guns. This is as reckless as licensing drivers without ever putting them behind the wheel.

In a recent CNN/Time Magazine poll, an overwhelming 77 % of Americans favor requiring people to get a license before they can legally buy handguns. And 76% also favor requiring handgun owners to register each handgun they own. Gun supporters in Congress, including Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), are introducing historic legislation for a comprehensive national system of handgun licensing and registration. In a recent telephone conversation with Michael Beard, co-founder and President of the national organization, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV), which just celebrated its 25th anniversary, he agreed that this issue will have considerable difficulty in Congress due to the powerful lobbying of the NRA, and that grassroots organizations, such as our own Coalition Against Gun Violence, must work locally and at the state level to achieve this essential legislation.

The following information was provided in part from CSGV's October 1999 Newsletter:

Why are handgun licensing and registration so important?
Under our current system, it is impossible to keep legally sold handguns out of the criminal and youth market. The only effective way to do that is by licensing handgun purchasers and registering handguns when they are sold or transferred.

Why is it important to require handgun purchasers to first obtain a handgun license?
Licensing would improve the effectiveness of background checks by giving law enforcement adequate time to complete the check, and would provide better identification of the handgun purchaser at the point of purchase.

Why is handgun registration and licensing so important to public safety?
Registration provides a mechanism for stopping the flow of handguns from the legal market (licensed dealers) to the criminal market. We need to register handguns when they are first sold so they can never be bought "legally" in "straw purchases" and immediately sold illegally into the youth or criminal markets. Registration prevents illegal transfers by making the registered owner responsible for what happens to his or her handgun, and makes owners periodically take responsibility for their guns by renewing their registrations.

Will licensing and registration make it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to obtain handguns?
No. Once a person obtains a license (which theoretically would require fingerprints, a photograph and a thorough background check) and demonstrates knowledge of the laws governing the use, possession, storage, and transfer of handguns and a basic understanding of firearm safety and minimal competence in handling firearms, purchasing a handgun will simply require a background check. While obtaining the initial license will require some paperwork and proof of appropriate training, it will be no harder than obtaining a drivers license. We license drivers and register cars, why not gun owners and handguns?

In practice, how would licensing and registration keep handguns out of the wrong hands?
Under a well-designed system, all handguns must be registered to a licensed purchaser when first sold (and used handguns must be transferred through a licensed dealer and registered in the same manner.) Regular renewal is required. If a handgun is sold, it must be immediately reregistered to the new owner. Registered handguns which fall into the wrong hands can immediately be traced back to the last registered owner, who will face serious criminal charges unless they are able to show they properly transferred the handgun in the first place.

An International Perspective

An international expert in the registration of firearms, Philip Alpers, of New Zealand, made these comments to the California State Assembly Select Committee on Gun Policy in Glendale on December 1, 1999, comparing the U.S. and other countries, which license and register firearms:

Around the world, handgun registration and ownerlicensing are acknowledged as the most effective way to minimise handgun-related death and trauma. In almost every democracy, police see handgun registration as an essential crime-busting tool.

There's nothing new in this. For more than sixty years, registration and owner licensing have been the accepted norm in two of the most established fields of crime and injury prevention - road safety and gun safety.

In both of these, two parallel systems of accountability - that is, licensing the owner, and then registering the gun or the automobile - are closely linked and interdependent. It's the experience of many countries that neither measure works well without the other.

You may have heard it said that Israel and Switzerland exemplify armed, but safe societies. In both countries, registration of firearms and owner licensing are long-established public safety measures.

Among the wealthier nations, the United States suffers the highest rate of firearm-related death. Even taking into account the recent update from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, which showed a sharp decrease in firearm-related mortality, the American rate of gun death per head of population remains double that of Northern Ireland.

So, how did our nations become so different? Sixty to seventy years ago, our nations took very different paths. In the 1930s, the United States decided to register all machine guns and license their owners. As a result of that stringent registration, machine guns are now the firearms least used in violence. But at the same time, the 54 members of the British Commonwealth, the nations of Europe and many others went a significant step further. We registered not just machine guns, but also handguns.

In developed democracies outside the United States, six or seven decades of consistent firearm registration and owner licensing - in particular the registration of handguns- are recognised as the cornerstone of effective gun injury prevention.

Nobody's pretending that we foreigners are any less violent than Americans. We're not. The big difference is in our levels of lethal violence. The eminent Californian criminologist Franklin Zimring put it this way: "You're just as likely to get punched in the mouth in a bar in Sydney (Australia) as in a bar in Los Angeles. But you're 20 times as likely to be killed in Los Angeles." Zimring goes on to suggest that the free availability of firearms - especially handguns in the United States - could have something to do with this disparity. It may also be worth noting that in the industrialized nations with lower levels of gun death than yours, the population is exposed to similar levels of media violence. So we might ask the question: if it's true that media violence makes guns desirable, how do all these countries differ in making guns available?

Many countries have shown that a register of firearms acts to reduce the flow of guns from lawful owner to criminal. In Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand, the computerised firearm registry is consulted thousands of times each day as a crime-busting tool. Our senior law enforcement officers agree; the more guns we have on the register, the more crimes police can solve and the more trauma we can prevent.

To quote the President of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police: "Without information about who owns guns, there is no effective gun control. Opponents of gun control argue that the registration of firearms will not reduce crime. In fact, it is the position of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police that cost-effective registration is a key component of the new proposed gun control legislation. Registration will help ensure that gun owners are held accountable for their firearms and do not sell [them] illegally or give them to individuals without appropriate authorisation. It will also help ensure that guns are safely stored. Claiming that gun registration will not prevent crime is akin to claiming that registering cars does not prevent accidents." Every mass-produced gun which is used in violence began its life as a legal firearm in the hands of a lawful owner. Many of these guns "leak out" to criminals, either by unlawful sale, by theft or neglect. By introducing accountability all the way down the chain, a well-designed gun registry can greatly reduce this lethal leakage from lawful gun owner to criminal.

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