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Bill Walters is offering one of the firearm safety courses needed to qualify for a permit. (Courtesy of Bill Walters)
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Bill Walters of 302 Tactical Operations Group will be teaching a firearms safety course to prospective handgun buyers next month at Delaware’s Mill Creek fire hall.
No one has signed up yet, but Walters says he’s certain that dozens will register.
That’s because on Nov. 16 — six days before the class — Delaware’s law that requires a state-issued permit to buy or transfer a handgun takes effect.
Walters attributed the failure of anyone to sign up yet to a federal lawsuit challenging the provision’s constitutionality that was filed four hours after then-Gov. John Carney signed it into law in May 2024.
“They’re all hoping at this point that some miracle stops the process from happening, but I don’t think it’s going to,” Walters said of prospective gun buyers.
The lawsuit is still working its way through U.S. District Court in Wilmington and won’t be decided anytime soon.
So in 20 days, permits will be required.
Lawmakers gave state police 18 months to put a permitting process into place, but as of Friday, the critical application needed to get the permit was not yet available. Police are directing the public to their website for information about getting a permit, and Lt. India Sturgis said authorities “anticipate the application process will open” sometime this week.
Sturgis said the process of setting up the permitting system was stymied by “an approximate six-month delay in the federal government granting us permission to run background investigations.”
So while Walters has no students yet for his Nov. 22 training class, he expects a flood of signups once applications are available online or at state police barracks.
He expects his classes and others to be filled with people who either thought the law would never take effect, didn’t realize the deadline was approaching, or recently decided they want a pistol or revolver but found out they couldn’t simply walk into a gun shop, submit to an instant background check, and walk out with their weapon.
“It’ll be knee-jerk afterwards,’’ Walters predicted.
Delaware is among about a dozen states, including New Jersey and Maryland but not Pennsylvania, that have so-called permit-to-purchase laws for all firearms or just for handguns.
Under the law, everyone who wants to buy a handgun in Delaware — except those with a permit to carry concealed weapons — must first obtain a permit.
But before buyers can get a permit, they must take several proactive steps.
The first is to take a safety training course from one of the state’s more than 50 certified instructors.
The course must cover safe handling and storage of guns and ammunition, child safety, fundamentals of safe shooting, applicable laws, information on how to manage a violent confrontation and suicide prevention, and live firing of at least 100 bullets.
Not everybody who needs a permit must take the course. The law exempts active and retired law enforcement officers, firearms dealers, licensed security guards, constables, correctional officers, members of the military, certified firearm instructors, competitive shooters and hunters with a state safety certification.
Walters said 302 Tac Ops offers an eight-hour class that takes one day, followed by a two-hour session on a later date, perhaps the next day, at his company’s firing range near Clayton. The total cost, including renting a gun and ammunition at the range near Clayton, is about $250, he said.
The second step for would-be buyers is to get fingerprinted, a process the state is facilitating through the vendor IdentoGO. The cost is $85. Appointments can be made online, using the service code 27S8N2. A search by WHYY News found that hundreds of slots are available.
Prospective buyers must also fill out an application with the State Bureau of Identification, an arm of the state police. Applications won’t be processed until the training course and fingerprinting are completed, Sturgis said.
Once an application is accepted, SBI will conduct a background investigation that includes checks of the state criminal justice database to see if someone is prohibited from buying or having a firearm in Delaware.
The fingerprints will be sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to run an instant background check.
SBI can also contact local law enforcement authorities in counties or towns where the applicant has lived for the last five years to ask if “any facts and circumstances” might be grounds for a rejection, according to the law.
The background check can’t be an open-ended probe, however.
The law requires that unless the application is rejected, SBI must grant the permit within 30 days of receiving the completed paperwork.
Once approved, the applicant must visit SBI’s headquarters in Dover to pick up an official permit, which is good for two years. There is no cost for the actual permit, which will contain the person’s name and address, and the permit’s expiration date. Sturgis said the “laminated card” will also include the person’s photo.
Wilmington lawyer Thomas Neuberger, one of the plaintiffs in the pending lawsuit — said the fact that no application is yet available, coupled with the 30-day turnaround period — has set the stage for a period of time when no one except those with a concealed carry permit can buy a handgun in Delaware.
“I think the state has fumbled the ball in the 18 months’’ since Carney signed the legislation, Neuberger said. “Now, in the last two minutes of the game, they’re trying to get their act together.”
“It’s too late now and I think there’s going to be a total gun ban on the 16th [of November] because dealers will not want to subject themselves to criminal liability. They’re not going to give you a handgun and sell it to you if you haven’t got the permit.“
Sturgis said training courses have already been available to the public, and state police are “committed to a secure, fair, and efficient implementation of the law.“
WHYY News asked Sturgis about Neuberger’s assertion that there could be several days when someone who fills out the application as soon as it becomes available won’t be able to exercise his or her constitutional right to buy a handgun come Nov. 16.
“We don’t operate under hypotheticals,’’ Sturgis said. “SBI will begin processing applications as soon as the portal is live. By law, the review of a complete application can take up to 30 days. Timing depends on when a complete application is submitted and the results of required state and federal checks.”
While state officials prepare to accept and review applications then issue permits, advocates for gun rights and for gun control continue debating whether the law is constitutional and if it will help reduce the gun violence that has plagued Wilmington, Dover and other parts of Delaware.
Traci Murphy of Coalition for a Safer Delaware, which was formerly called the Delaware Coalition Against Gun Violence, predicts positive results.
“Handguns are most often used in homicide and suicide,’’ Murphy said. “The idea is to put a lot more rigor behind who can purchase these weapons legally. And we know that there’s an underground market, but we also know that by cutting down on legal buyers, we will cut down on illegal sellers.”
Murphy foresees fewer so-called straw purchases, where someone illegally buys a weapon for someone who is prohibited from having one.
“If someone has to go through a permitting process, they have to undergo a comprehensive criminal background check and then they have to pay and undergo rigorous training, including safety training, and then they have to do an in-person appearance before law enforcement,’’ Murphy said.
“We believe that they are far less likely to look a law enforcement officer in the eye, tell them that they’re using the weapon for home security and then go and sell it on the underground market.”
Murphy said New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York and other states with low rates of gun violence, as reported by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Gun Violence Solutions, have similar laws.
Although courts have not overturned permit-to-purchase laws, Neuberger predicted that the Supreme Court will ultimately find they violate the Second Amendment’s provisions granting Americans the right to bear arms. He pointed to a 2022 high court decision that said gun laws must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” to survive legal challenges.
“In colonial days you brought your rifle, your handgun to church,” Neuberger said. “Everybody went everywhere with guns. Under this, I’ve got to go through a several-month process to get a handgun to protect my family.”
While instructor Walters looks forward to teaching the safety course so people can get permitted, he doesn’t think the permit-to-purchase law is constitutional or will reduce violence.
“For people that have never bought before, having some type of fundamental basic safety course is a great idea,’’ he said. “I think to make it mandatory for purchase is unconstitutional. But we have other states around us that have been doing very similar things for a long time.”
Nor does Walters think fewer guns will make their way into the hands of people intent on engaging in violence.
“Anybody that is on the criminality side is going to find a way to get it. Period. Full stop,’’ Walters said. “You’re not going to stop that.”
State Sen. Majority Whip Tizzy Lockman, the Wilmington Democrat who was lead sponsor of legislation that took five years and underwent multiple changes before lawmakers passed the bill, said she understands the continued opposition but disagrees with it.
“There’s always going to be the detractors and folks who don’t want to see any policy such as this,’’ Lockman said. She expressed confidence that the law will withstand the constitutional challenge. “But I also see a good cross-section of folks who see the value in this kind of gun-sense policy.”
As for any possible reduction in shootings across the state in the future, Lockman said, “It’s a little early to do any victory dances of that kind. But I’m just glad that it’s getting off the ground.”
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