Licensed to Carry, Reason to Worry?

Nov. 13, 2015

It’s About to Get Easier to Get a Concealed Pistol License in Michigan

County gun boards, the gatekeepers who decide whether a person should be given a concealed pistol permit, will disappear at the end of the month. Beginning in December, state police will conduct background checks and county clerks will process the paperwork to issue licenses to carry handguns.

Depending who you ask, the move either eliminates an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy or takes away a critical check in the system. Local police might know troubling things about an applicant that wouldn’t come up in a background check. It’s also unclear who will ensure applicants have been properly trained before they get a license.

SLIP THROUGH THE CRACKS

Grand Traverse County Sheriff Tom Bensley is not in favor of the change.

“I think it’s a bad move on the part of the state,” he said.

Bensley believes that, without a local check, people with mental health problems will be more likely to slip through and be given a Concealed Pistol License (CPL).

“There will be no checking into local history, local records,” he said. “Last month, we denied two people because they wouldn’t provide us with mental health records that we asked for. They will reapply and they will get their CPL.”

Bensley said the state police are good at background checks, but there is no way they can know what local police know.

Emmet County Sheriff Peter Wallin agreed.

“It was nice to have the gun board because I know the people,” Wallin said. “I probably have more information about people who live in my county than they do down in Lansing. We’ll see how it works. I’m sure someone will slip through the cracks eventually.”

Charlevoix County Sheriff Don Schneider said he knows people who frequently get into trouble and have repeated police contacts, but also somehow avoid having a criminal record. He said he’s also able to check with Community Mental Health and question applicants if they appear to have problems that would preclude them from getting a license. Schneider said he doesn’t know how the state will do that.

“We have a pretty good finger on the pulse of the people of our county and we know who should and who should not have a permit,” Schneider said.

LOCAL CHECKS ARE LIMITED

David Bieganowski, an attorney specializing in firearms law, teaches CPL classes and sits on the Grand Traverse County gun board with Bensley, at least for one more meeting. He said he’s glad the gun boards have been dissolved.

“I’ve always been in favor of that. I think it’s more efficient to have the secretary of state or the county clerk do it,” Bieganowski said.

Bieganowski is a passionate Second Amendment supporter and said he isn’t concerned that a layer of local control over permitting is going away. He noted that a sheriff only has information about a person’s history if that history occurred in their county; if the applicant had scrapes with the law someplace else, sheriffs wouldn’t know about that.

“[Bensley] always thinks that his background checks are better than anybody else's background checks, and that’s partially true,” Bieganowski said. “He does do more thorough checks if the person has always been in Grand Traverse County.”

Bieganowski said the state will never be able to look into an applicant’s mind and determine his/her mental health.

“That’s always been a problem,” he said. “That’s not going to change.”

GOLF WITH THE SHERIFF

In Michigan, gun boards have been around for decades. For years, they were a severe obstacle for people seeking a concealed carry permit. Until 2000, Michigan was a “may issue” state, which meant that a gun board could issue a permit if they thought a person needed one. People who regularly carried large amounts of cash, or retired police officers, could go before a local gun board to ask for a license.

“If you golfed with the sheriff, or you went to church with the prosecutor, you could get a permit,” said Joel Fulton, owner of Freedom Firearms in Battle Creek.

In 2000, Michigan became a “shall issue” state, meaning there had to be a good reason to reject an application. Since then, Fulton said standards have varied. Kent County, for example, required a doctor’s note stating the applicant was of sound mental health. In Wayne County, he said, it seemed as if officials dragged their feet rather than issue permits.

“It wasn’t uniform throughout the state, which means citizens, based on the geographical area that they lived in, could get discriminated against,” he said.

Jack Fellows of Hampel’s Lock and Gun Shop in Traverse City said the only complaint he hears about county gun boards is that they are a waste of time. Most people have to take a morning off to attend the meeting only to be rubber-stamped.

“There’s really nothing done at the board hearings,” he said. “It sounds like [the new law is] the natural progression. The original intent was just that — to eliminate these duplicate efforts to streamline the process.”

THE BENEFITS OF A LOCAL BOARD

Loss of the gun boards looks different depending on where you live in Michigan, said Scott Sieffert, a Traverse City CPL instructor.

“It depends on which side of the fence you are. There are some good things to it and there are some bad things,” he said.

In sparsely populated northern Michigan, county gun boards worked efficiently. In downstate metropolitan areas, applications stacked up and it could take months to get a permit. The state police background check may streamline the process, but that also might put everyone in the same long line to get a CPL, he said.

Benzie County Prosecutor Sara Swanson said that, in small counties, gun boards could help people through the process. She said an applicant at a recent meeting was told his criminal background check turned up a conviction that would preclude him from getting a CPL. The man claimed that was a mistake and the board agreed to set aside his application until the next meeting so he could get documentation to prove his conviction had been expunged.

Under the new system, that applicant wouldn’t be questioned and he would have been denied a license. That denial would have automatically made him ineligible to apply for a license for the next year.

“Actually, having real people review things instead of just a system has some good benefits,” Swanson said.

WHO WILL OVERSEE THE INSTRUCTORS?

The dissolution of local gun boards will also eliminate a layer of oversight of CPL instructors, the people who teach the classes qualifying people to hide loaded handguns under their coats.

The law requires that applicants undergo training through a program certified by an organization like the National Rifle Association that meets specific requirements in the statute. The training is intensive; it typically requires five hours of classroom time, another hour of training regarding the law, and three hours of gun range time.

Swanson said the gun board questions applicants about their training to make sure their instructor abided by the statute. She said they’ve rejected applications from people who were inadequately trained. “The traveling person who will come and do classes at your house — a lot of times they weren’t meeting the requirements of the statute and I don’t know how the clerks will find out that. I don’t know if they can,” Swanson said.

Bob Roelofs, who owns a gun range in Lake Ann that hosts CPL classes, agreed that taking away the gun board removes a check on CPL instructors.

“You have people out there doing classes that are fraudulent, that are presenting classes that are not within the guidelines of what the state laws say, and that’s unfortunate,” Roelofs said.

He said good CPL instruction is critical so that people who are carrying handguns understand the law and know how to use a gun for protection. Bad teachers produce bad students.

“I don’t want them carrying a gun around me,” Roelofs said.

GOOD RIDDANCE TO THE GUN BOARD

Adam Schaub, for one, will be happy for the gun board oversight to end. Schaub was a police officer in Arizona before he returned to Traverse City where he runs a gym and has been teaching a CPL class for a few months.

He’s run afoul of the Grand Traverse County gun board because he doesn’t teach the kind of class they want him to teach.

“I’m teaching the NRA basic pistol class and then I add the points that need to be covered to teach CPL,” Schaub said. “It’s absolutely fine to do that.”

Schaub said he’s been told by state regulators that what he’s doing meets legal requirements and that his training certificate will qualify applicants for a CPL under the new law. For the past few months, his CPL training has been accepted in counties around northern Michigan except Grand Traverse County.

Bensley said certain CPL classes were deemed inadequate because instructors weren’t teaching approved classes.

“Some of the classes are hybrids of that class and other classes,” Bensley said. “Why don’t they just teach the class that they’re authorized to teach? Then there’s no problem.”

Bieganowski, who joined the gun board in 2009, said he’s had this dispute many times with other CPL instructors who weren’t teaching the right course and the Michigan Attorney General agreed with his interpretation of what kind of training is required.

“We’re one of the few counties that actually scrutinizes the trainers’ certificates,” Bieganowski said. “Most gun boards don’t have somebody like me looking at some of the certificates.”

BUYER (AND BYSTANDERS) BEWARE

While Schaub is glad the Grand Traverse board will stop blocking his students, he said he thinks there should be more oversight of instructors.

“I’m just saying there are some that they allow to teach who have no business teaching CPL, just none,” he said. Others agree that there are good and bad instructors in the CPL training business.

“There is essentially no oversight for the people that teach the class anymore,” Sieffert said. “The elimination of the gun boards will take away that oversight; it’s truly buyer beware. I know what little oversight there was will be gone.”

Fellows also believes some trainers are not as effective as others. License holders come to Hampel’s with questions that should have been answered in CPL class.

“We have customers, every once in a while, who come in and are asking us the most basic of questions,” Fellows said.

Grand Traverse County Clerk Bonnie Scheele, who will be in charge of ensuring CPL applicants are properly trained beginning next month, said the law requires her office to collect documentation to prove applicants have been properly trained.

“The training certificate has to have all kinds of stuff on it starting Dec. 1,” Scheele said. “I sent a letter to all of the training people about what needs to be there. I sent it to every trainer I could think of in the area.