Michigan Votes Forum

Introduced in the Senate on March 22, 2007, to repeal the law that requires a person who acquires a pistol to present it to the local law enforcement agency for a “safety inspection." A person would still be required to obtain a license to acquire a pistol, and would have to send completed copies of the pistol sales record to the local police or sheriff, with violations subject to a $250 civil fine. These agencies would have enter the data into a State Police database, or send them to the State Police to be entered

The vote was 36 in favor, 0 opposed and 2 not voting

(Senate Roll Call 402 at Senate Journal 60)

Click here to view bill details.

Excellent! Lets get rid of this safety inspection crap! I wish it got rid of the permit to purchase too, but I'll take what I can get!

we shouldn't have to buy our rights. we shouldn't have to jump through flaming hoops to protect ourselves. we shouldn't have to justify ourselves to exercise our rights to self defense, to hunt, or to shoot recreationally. forcing the law abiding to do extraordinary things to exercise their rights is discriminatory. it is a tactic that was used to ensure that blacks didn't arm themselves. this practice, and registering weapons AT ALL should disappear on those grounds alone. the safety inspection doesn't inspect for safety. a lie told to the people to insure compliance. the safety inspection DOES re-register weapons. a "lie by omission" that duplicates a separate wasted effort, doubly wasting our tax money. registration in itself is a futile venture, again originated to keep blacks unarmed. a racist move disguised as 'progressive law enforcement'. registration has not deterred one single weapon theft since it began, and it has assisted in recovering VERY FEW weapons. it HAS kept the citizen with below average income from being able to afford to arm himself, by imposing another financial burden on him. this burden, and the "permit to purchase" should go away. CITIZENS need no one's PERMISSION to purchase a weapon, SUBJECTS DO.

has all the earmarks of legislation bought and paid for by some PAC. anybody care to guess what one?

as they are called, provide no useful purpose whatever. I have never had anyone do anything except write down the serial number. Call it what is really is-a registration scheme.

someone gets hold of this "safety inspection" data and publishes it, like the Roanoke VA. Times did recently when it published the names of all 135,000 VA. concelaed weapons permit holders on it's website?

The Michigan Police Officer's Association has endorsed this bill (and actually helped get it started) due to the time wasting aspects of the inspections and the lack of any functional, helpful outcome from them. As with most businesses, municipal organizations are also searching for ways to streamline their organizations. This is just one small way but getting rid of these time wasting activities will definately help.

In Michigan, a pistol saftey check has always been a pistol registration scheme. I have obeyed the law since the 1970's, and have never seen a police department inspect a pistol I was submitting to any type of a saftey inspection. History has already testified that "registration" is always the first step to eventual confiscation. People don't think about the right to own and carry a firearm as a civil right. We tend to classify the second amendment seperate from the rest of our bill of rights. Accepting a reduction or diminishing your access to firearms is really a violation of your civil rights. A person would not tolerate being told if he could vote or not, where he could worship, or whom he may associate with. Why tolerate it with the second amendment? This legislation is a huge step in the right direction....towards fully restoring your right to keep and bear arms in this state.

people who would have a problem with this legislation. they are the hard-core liberals. we haven't heard from them yet on this issue, but you can be sure that we will. they will try to come up with bugus "facts and figures" that try to show that registration and safety checks have somehow or other solved most of the crimes in michigan. they will try to tell us that without 'permit to purchase', registration, and so called safety checks, the weapons of michigan will all end up in the hands of criminals. the truth is that neither 'permit to purchase', registration, or so called safety checks do ANYTHING to reduce crime. a 'permit to purchase' is nothing more than a redundancy on the FEDERAL INSTANT BACKGROUND CHECK. but it IS used as an information gathering opportunity, (who has a gun, why they are planning on purchasing another one, what they plan on using it for, none of which is ANY OF THEIR BUSINESS.) registration of handguns, or any gun for that matter, is simply a technique that will allow eventual confiscation, as was the plan when it was originally started in the 1870's, to take firearms away and keep them away from blacks. it serves no other useful purpose. a 'safety check', especially one that doesn't REALLY check for safety, is a thinly veiled attempt at using the law abiding shooters desire to be percieved as 'safe' to entice him to go to his local law enforcement office to RE-REGISTER the gun. three different 'registrations' at three different times, all for ONE gun, and ONE GUN OWNER. this has been going on for YEARS. has it served the purpose that was promised when the people were first lied to? no. it has NOT reduced crime AT ALL. it's other implied promise, that it would "keep guns out of the wrong hands" is also a boatload of pap. the only 'hands' it kept guns out of were the law abiding poor, who couldn't afford to jump through the flaming hoops set up by this legislation. those that originally foisted this legislation on us are probably dead and gone, but those who SUPPORT IT are alive and well, and working on OUR PAYROLL. maybe it's time to identify those who think that registration and confiscation of weapons is a good idea, and vote them out of office.

not only posted the NAMES, it posted the ADDRESSES, AND WHAT TYPE OF WEAPON WAS AT THAT ADDRESS. gun thefts went through the roof. all parties involved with this scandal should be fired immediately, arrested, and sued. that's like announcing that several thousand people take prozac and listing their names and addressed so that druggies can waltz into their homes and help themselves. those that supplied this information, as well as those that the information was supplied to only exist to aid and assist criminals as proven by these felonious acts.

I am unable to locate where they do anything other than eliminate the records and remove possession of a pistol that hasn’t been “safety inspected” from the list of crimes. Perhaps others can describe how this works. Wouldn’t it be simpler just to delete those portions of the current law that mandate (1) obtaining a permit to purchase, and (2) require the “safety inspection”? David Felbeck MCRGO legislative analyst

be simpler. nothing is simple about the michigan legal system. a law must be repealed, it cannot just be 'removed'. especially if it contained criminal penalties.

doing only those two things stops short of the ideal, which is to eliminate the 'permit to purchase', registration, and the so called safety inspection. the next step is to allow citizens to lawfully carry loaded weapons in their cars. as a police officer, i'd rather have lawfully armed citizens carrying guns in their cars, than to be the only armed person on "my side" of the gunfight.

Which "PAC" wanted this phony "inspection" in the first place?

I've noted that legislation favoring second Amendment rights and opposing registration legislation, bans etc. is favored by the police on the street, but opposed by Police Chiefs, who are beholden to the politicians to whom they owe their jobs.

To your comment Anonymous #6. Have you read Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution of Michigan? "Every person has a right to keep and bear arms for the defense of himself and the state." Do you want that constitutional protection rescinded? Well, what rights of yours can we take away? I believe that pistol safety inspections are a waste of time, money and an interference in our privacy rights. 6) this bill [by Anonymous Citizen on March 26, 2007]has all the earmarks of legislation bought and paid for by some PAC.

Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution of Michigan? "Every person has a right to keep and bear arms for the defense of himself and the state."

A poster writes: “… Have you read Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution of Michigan? ‘Every person has a right to keep and bear arms for the defense of himself and the state.’ Do you want that constitutional protection rescinded? Well, what rights of yours can we take away?” Explain, exactly, how the handgun safety inspection law “rescinds” the right to keep and bear arms in Michigan. The fact is, you can’t, because the inspection law does no such thing. It is not a prohibition or taking of rights; it only regulates and guides how the right to keep and bear arms is to be asserted when it comes to handguns, and has been doing so for 80 years. The same poster also writes: “I believe that pistol safety inspections are a waste of time, money and an interference in our privacy rights.” Now you are getting somewhere. This is an opinion-based argument that goes right to the heart of the matter. The questions to ask now are these: Has the handgun safety inspection law succeeded in its purpose of protecting public safety? There is no way to prove that it has, in fact, prevented crimes or firearms accidents; but how many crime cases has this law helped in some significant way to solve? On the flip side, in how many instances has this law led to the wrong (an innocent) person being investigated, detained, arrested or convicted of a crime committed with a handgun? After 80 years of this law being on the books, there should be a good body of data to indicate it has, or has not been an effective law enforcement tool. By definition in this case, an effective law enforcement tool is one that that genuinely helps solve crimes and prosecute real criminals, without causing harm or undue inconvenience to innocent parties. I would contend that if this law cannot be shown to have been effective by the use of real data collected across 80 years, it should be taken off the books.

Registration is still required only it will not be called a "safety inspection".

So now they have edited this bill so that registration is still required, you just can do it by mail. I am so glad that our senate decided to change this bill around so it barely resembles the original intent. (In case anyone didn't pick it up, this is massively sarcastic. I am VERY disappointed.)

This bill is a MESS! I thought the idea was to ELIMINATE registration (a.k.a. "safety inspection"). But this does not. It simply saves a new gun owner a drive to the local cop shop. This is "mail-in" registration! The main intent of the original bill was to eliminate registration which has NOT SOLVED A SINGLE CRIME IN OUR STATE. It would also relieve police departments of the burden of maintaining a mountain of unnecessary records. So who came up with this "compromise," and what warped sort of logic fostered it? Once again, our public servants have taken a sane, logical proposal and rendered it useless. Remember this the next time you're asked to vote for 'em.

except eliminating the drive to the Sheriffs Dept. You still have to register, like a sex offender. I'm suprised the Dems didn't add a requirement that would prohibit us from living within 1000 feet of schools etc. There are a lot of "R"s by the names. Maybe it's time we clean them out and get a new batch in.