Registering a gun in the District could soon become a whole lot easier.
The D.C. Council gave preliminary approval Tuesday to an amendment package that eliminates a slew of prerequisites to getting a firearm approved and logged in to the Metropolitan Police Department’s tracking system. The Firearms Amendment Act of 2012 is expected to pass when the council takes it up again in April.
The dais was unusually quiet before voting unanimously to approve the new regulations as well as an emergency measure to postpone looming gun re-registration requirements in the city until 2014. Councilman Phil Mendelson, who proposed the registration overhaul last December, said Tuesday that the MPD is unprepared for an upcoming deadline requiring gun owners to renew their registration.
Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh was the only member to voice concern regarding the new regulations.
“I must say one of the things that was somewhat of a problem for me is eliminating the education requirement,” she said.
Mendelson’s bill strikes a four-hour classroom and one-hour field range training requirement and mandates that registrants watch a video instead. The package also does away with vision tests and the current registration fee, which ranges from $48 to $60 per gun.
But many of the core requirements of the city’s original 1975 gun laws are still in place, he said. Certain types of guns will still be prohibited, and persons deemed “potentially dangerous” after a background check will not be able to possess a firearm.
The Metropolitan Police Department supports the bill and has advocated for simplifying the registration process.
“Based on three years of experience with the firearms registration process, we believed the process could be streamlined to strike an appropriate balance between Second Amendment rights and public safety interests,” spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump said.
The amendments are also in part a response to a 2008 Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller that found some of the city’s regulations violated an individual’s Second Amendment right to bear arms.
