I’ve been following the progress of the bill to repeal Minnesota’s redundant and ridiculous permit to purchase law. What I think is interesting is how this bill has evolved. The bill first started off as HF 161 which would have extended the validity of permits to purchase to five years [PDF].
This would have made sense in that you’d only have to renew the purchase permit as often as a carry permit. In Minnesota a permit to carry also works as a permit to purchase so those of use with carry permits never have to obtain separate permits to purchase. Likewise permits to carry are good for five years before you have to retest. Nobody could ever give me a good reason why a permit to purchase was only good for a year while a permit to carry was good for five years, they should have both been good for five years.
Well apparently HF 161 was amended with the following [PDF] which just eliminates the stupid permit to purchase all together. I’m not sure how this bill went from simply extending the validity period of a permit to purchase to eliminating it completely but I’m glad it did.
A few law enforcement organizations are opposed to repealing this requirement and cite claims of the state background checks being more thorough. I believe this has more to do with the fact that they like having the authority to tell who can and can not exercise their right to bear certain arms (you don’t need a permit to purchase for shotguns or “sporting purpose rifles” just handguns and “assault-weapons”).
If the state background checks actually caught anybody that would have been missed by a federal background check I can guarantee you that the law enforcement organizations would be touting out each and every instance to prove their point. The fact that they haven’t brought out a single instance leads me to believe it’s never happened or has happened so rarely that bringing up the numbers would be embarrassing considering the cost of doing these additional background checks.