More Michigan Firearm Law Incremental Improvements

How do you get to a pro-gun environment and fix what years of anti-gun and gun-ignorant laws in Michigan have wrought?

You do it one bill at a time, or in this case with two bills at a time.

The first bill, HB 5085 which just passed the Senate fixes a ridiculous restriction in state law.

Under current Michigan law, if you're under 18, you cannot legally posses a pistol “for the purposes of target practice or instruction in the safe use,” of a handgun unless the “person’s parent or guardian is physically present and supervising the person.”

It fixes this by adding that anyone can be the youth's supervisor if they are over 21 and have taken a pistol safety class equivalent to the concealed carry class. It's a sensible fix and now allows the Boy Scouts and others to teach firearm and pistol safety and shooting. So if it passes you're no longer committing a crime if you teach youth to shoot pistols without their parents or guardians being present.

The bill has passed both House and Senate and is being enrolled to be sent on its way to the governor.

The second bill, SB 789 eliminates the County Gun Board system and simply has the County Clerk process the license. Under the proposal, the Clerk now must issue the license within 45 days and the application and receipt is proof of renewal, and is the carry permit if it takes over 45 days for the license to issue.

This fixes both the games played by various counties in delaying the issuance of a carry permit by malice or incompetence, and gets rid of the gun board system, which in some counties is still used to harass applicants by making them needlessly take time off work to appear before it only to have the board immediately approve the application. The bill also reduces the application fee from $105 to $90.

This bills now heads to the House for its consideration.

With luck next up will be reform and elimination of the no-carry zones, as there's still a lot of room for improvement with Michigan's firearm laws.