A proposal to require training and a permit to purchase handguns passed in Delaware's Senate on Tuesday on a straight party-line vote.
State Sen. Elizabeth Lockman’s bill would task Delaware’s State Bureau of Investigation with conducting in-depth background checks for prospective handgun buyers; those checks would require fingerprinting and inquiries to local law enforcement.
If a buyer receives a permit, they would have a year to purchase as many handguns as they choose before needing to re-apply.
Senate Minority Leader Brian Pettyjohn argued the bill gives the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) too much discretion to make subjective decisions about granting permits to prospective gun buyers.
But Chief Deputy Attorney General Anthony Mackler – whose office backs the bill – says that discretion would allow SBI to consider details of a prospective buyer’s background that aren’t criminal convictions.
“From a law enforcement perspective," he said, "if someone is buying a firearm, we would want to know if they have had a lot of domestic violence calls to their house in some prior period.”
Another opponent, Delaware Sportsmen’s Association President Jeff Hague, notes that Delaware still hasn’t acted on law passed last year to make the SBI responsible for conducting background checks on gun buyers.
“It’s been ten months [since the background check bill passed]," he said. "The funds are there. It’s an enhanced background check for everything – domestic violence, mental health – because it utilizes all the local databases Delaware has.”
Delaware shifted away from state-level background checks in 2013 due to budget constraints; instead, gun dealers use the less-rigorous federal background check system. The bill restoring state-level background checks passed with bipartisan support in 2022, but its implementation has been delayed by staffing constraints.
Delaware’s permit-to-purchase bill mirrors similar rules in neighboring states like Maryland and New Jersey, but the number of states with permit-to-purchase requirements for handguns is shrinking; North Carolina’s state legislature recently repealed a similar law.
The bill comes with a $21 million price tag, a portion of which would be used to subsidize handgun safety training for low-income Delawareans.
