Two bills proposed by a Michigan state senator could present gun store owners with paradoxical requirements that could make it difficult to open a shop.
Democratic state Sen. Stephanie Chang introduced SB 853 and SB 854, seeking to impose new requirements on Michigan gun stores, including requiring them to obtain a state license by fulfilling a number of requirements, one of which is obtaining a Federal Firearms License (FFL). The bills are currently pending in the Michigan state Senate Committee on Civil Rights, Judiciary and Public Safety, which Chang chairs, and will be debated in a Tuesday hearing.
In its text, SB853 states that 18 months after enactment, every gun store must have a license from the state of Michigan in addition to its FFL. However, one requirement the bill imposes to receive a state license for a gun store is for the applicant to “[have] been granted and [hold] a federal firearms license.”
According to the ATF’s website on applying for a FFL, however, in order to be granted a FFL, the applicant must be in full compliance with state and local laws and requirements. In the instructions for the application form one must fill out, the ATF indicates that applicants must have state and local licenses.
“State laws or local ordinances may require additional licenses or permits for firearms licenses,” the instructions say. “Other State or local requirements, such as cash bonds, liability insurance, zoning restrictions, collection of sales taxes, etc., may also apply to your proposed firearms business. You should contact your State and local authorities for specific information on their requirements.”
The National Rifle Association noted that FFLs have become the latest target of anti-Second Amendment organizations. The Maine House of Representatives voted down similar legislation on April 9.
“As they see these hardware bans are coming under immense scrutiny and hopefully soon the Supreme Court does their job and shoots down these ridiculous gun bans, they’re looking to find their next off-ramp for what their next boondoggle will be for gun control, and that is going after law-abiding FFLs,” spokesperson Justin Davis told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Because if they can restrict the opportunity to buy firearms from the legal dealers, then that means less people will be able to buy firearms and what this really does is it doesn’t really attack the major manufacturers and distributors, it really goes after these mom-and-pop stores that don’t have a team of lawyers to go through this insane amount of paperwork.”
In addition to the paradoxical process imposed by SB 853, SB 854 requires gun store owners to maintain various security and surveillance systems in their business establishments, with a requirement to have video surveillance that would be continuous while the store is open – and would trigger when activated by motion sensors when the business is closed. The videos would need to be of sufficient resolution to identify people purchasing firearms, and the text appears to mandate the purchase of multiple cameras and to keep the footage available for six years.
Storage requirements for a 1080p high-definition camera are about 35 gigabytes (GB) per day per camera, according to Optiview, a company that manufactures surveillance systems. Optiview estimates that the storage space requirements for 30 days at 1080p format would be 640 GB per day for a 16-camera setup – about 19 terabytes (TB) per month, while a calculator from Western Digital puts the storage requirements for keeping one year of footage from a 12-camera system taking 1920×1080 video at just over 181 TB.
“Just the storage of, of data that’s required to have, you know, whatever timeline they put on for the amount of years or days or months to have all that footage stored, you’d have to have these massive server rooms,” Davis told the DCNF, noting that that anti-Second Amendment groups are highlighting “access to firearms” in the aftermath of Saturday’s assassination attempt targeting President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Cole Allen, who was charged with attempting to assassinate Trump, purchased his firearms, a shotgun and a handgun, in California, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, including records of sales maintained by the state, bans on so-called “assault weapons” and prohibiting private sales of firearms. Major anti-Second Amendment organizations, including the Brady Campaign, Giffords and Everytown, all have praised the state for passing restrictive legislation.
Chang, ATF and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the DCNF regarding the apparent paradoxical process.
“The Second Amendment Section continues to monitor legislative action across the United States and will enforce Second Amendment rights as necessary to ensure state and local laws are implemented within the confines of Supreme Court jurisprudence,” a Justice Department spokesperson told the DCNF.
This article has been updated with comments from the Department of Justice.
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