PA Bill Number: HB2311
Title: Establishing the School Mental Health Screening Grant and Development Program.
Description: Establishing the School Mental Health Screening Grant and Development Program. ...
Last Action: Laid on the table
Last Action Date: Sep 23, 2024
PA-More Lehigh Valley residents want to carry, gun records show :: 12/27/2016
As 2016 comes to a close, more people want to legally carry a concealed firearm than ever.
Conceal carry license applications are up across America, Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley this year. Such licenses allow handgun owners to legally transport it in their vehicles or to carry it out of plain sight.
Under federal law, every application must be run through the National Instant Check System, a database that can determine if a person is legally barred from carrying a concealed weapon. Applicants can be denied if they have a known drug addiction, been imprisoned for more than a year or have a history of domestic violence, among other reasons.
Pennsylvania state law extends denials to anyone ever committed to a mental health institution.
Inquiries to the system, also known as NICS, have been on the rise for a decade, the FBI says. The first 11 months of 2016 saw 24.7 million background checks performed through NICS, about 1.6 million more checks than were performed in 2015. The incomplete 2016 numbers are nearly double the 12.7 million conducted in 2008.
Pennsylvania is among the leading states in background checks, according to FBI statistics. As of Nov. 30, Pennsylvania officials had accessed NICS for that purpose more than a million times, the seventh-most checks by a state.
Gun-control advocates and gun-rights activists offered conflicting explanations for another year of increasing interest in carrying a concealed weapon.
Kim Stolfer, founder of Firearm Owners Against Crime, a political action committee promoting Second Amendment rights, said Americans are becoming more proactive in their own safety. The increased visibility of mass shootings has caused people to take extra precautions, especially when police officials such as Detroit Police Chief James Craig have advocated for citizens to legally carry weapons.
"The average person is coming to realize they have the capacity, ability and skill set to protect themselves," he said.
Fritz Walker, a board member of CeaseFirePa, a nonprofit organization that lobbies for gun-control legislation, said fear likely plays a large role in the decision. Aside from worries about crime and terrorism, rhetoric from the presidential election cycle likely raised concerns about the potential of sweeping changes to gun control had Democrat Hillary Clinton defeated Republican Donald Trump, he said.
"There was a lot of advertising built around the fear that Hillary Clinton was going to take away your guns," Walker said.
In Pennsylvania, applications are submitted to county sheriff's departments, which contact state police to run names through the system. The Lehigh Valley's two sheriffs said their offices have been inundated with applications all year, breaking recent records.
As of Dec. 15, Lehigh County Sheriff Joe Hannah said the county had received 6,195 applications, breaking last year's record of 5,725. Northampton County Sheriff David Dalrymple said his department received its 5,400th application as of Dec. 9 — just 56 off its record set in 2013.
State law requires application reviews be completed within 45 days. Both sheriffs said they've had to hire additional staff to still do it. Hannah said he's looking to train another part-time deputy to assist in the reviews, he said.
"It didn't seem like a pervasive problem, but in some cases they weren't being processed in a timely manner," he said.
Northampton County experienced similar trouble in 2012 and 2013, when its applications skyrocketed in the wake of shootings in Aurora, Colo. and Newtown, Conn. Political pressure increased on Congress to pass new gun-control legislation, and law enforcement officials at the time speculated people were rushing to carry their guns legally ahead of any new laws.
Dalrymple said he has three employees dedicated to handling license-to-carry applications, and they've been enough to keep up with the rising tide of paperwork. He's satisfied knowing they're up to the task, he said, even if he can't explain why they've been increasingly busy.
"Maybe it's a reaction to political climate or to events that transpire across the world," Dalrymple said. "There's no way to accurately predict why its up or down."
TShortell@mcall.com
Twitter @TShortell
610-820-6168
Packing heat
2016 applications to carry concealed firearms are breaking records.
- Lehigh County: New record set in 2016 with 6,195 applications through Dec. 15
- Northampton County: 5,400 applications through Dec. 9, on pace to break 2013 record of 5,456 applications
- Pennsylvania: 1.03 million applications through Nov. 30, on pace to break 2015 record of 1.04 million
- USA: New record set in 2016, with 24.7 million applications through Nov. 30
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-license-to-carry-record-20161219-story.html
