Our Staff Photographer, Dave, is a resident of Michigan.
Today, his home state will rid itself of the last vestiges of racist firearms laws
Beginning Wednesday, Michigan will no longer require a post-purchase safety inspection of handguns purchased. Currently, every time a handgun is purchased in Michigan, whether it is a commercial sale or a private sale between two individuals, the purchaser must take the pistol to their local police department and present it for “safety inspection.” During these inspections, actual checks for safety really never took place. What was accomplished was that the make, model, caliber and serial number of the gun was registered to the purchaser.
For those unfamiliar, this scheme was used by local constabularies to deny firearms ownership to anyone the Sheriff/Chief of Police didn’t like. As you can imagine these denials were handed out to mostly the blacks and latinos.
Unfortunately, the Michigan State Police got their wish and an extra page was added to the purchase paperwork to be delivered by the purchaser to their local constabulary office within 30 days of purchase so that the firearm’s information can be connected to your CCW, but as David and the CalGuns guys are showing us, small steps can work.
I would suggest that whatever state firearms civil rights organization helped organize the removal of the “safety inspection” law now begin a campaign to designate one day a month when gun buyers drop off their paperwork; say, the 15th.
Flood the system on that one day for a few months and the constable’s admin folks will raise a shit storm. The paperwork has a deadline and these data entry folks have to meet that deadline or they are out of compliance.
Get enough non-compliance from the local agencies and you have a new issue that the paperwork itself is too onerous.
Any other fine ideas can be left in the comments.