Targeting gun fee
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A proposed five-year, $100 fee on handgun permits has gun owners more angry about their rights than their pocketbooks
By TOM PRECIOUS
News Albany Bureau
2/13/2004
ROBERT KIRKHAM/Buffalo News
"We have a Second Amendment, and they've been trying to chip away at that for years." Bill Heichberger, an Orchard Park handgun owner, on proposed permit fee increase.
ALBANY - Of the nearly $1 billion in tax and fee hikes Gov. George E. Pataki proposed last month, the one squirreled away in Section I of the penal law sounds innocuous enough: a $100 fee on handgun permits once every five years that would cost gun owners about five cents a day.
But the hike in handgun permit fees has sparked angry and increasingly vocal opposition, as gun owners claim the state is not only trying to take their money but their Second Amendment rights.
On the surface, it might appear to be a pocketbook issue. Gun owners would be hit with a $100 licensing fee, an amount that can triple when all the other state and local expenses are added in.
But the resentment goes much deeper. New York wants to take away people's weapons, gun owners say, by ending the current lifetime license for handgun permits.
The message is spreading on Internet chat sites, in gun shops, obscure gun owner newsletters and low-watt radio stations across the state.
"To tax a civil right out of existence is obviously something the people shouldn't stand for," said Herb Barry, a gun owner from Buffalo who is among those mobilizing to persuade legislators to reject the proposal.
Under Pataki's plan, every five years handgun owners will have to re-register their weapons with county governments. That, critics say, gives judges and others who sign off on the permits an opportunity once every five years to deny licenses to people who want, for instance, to carry a concealed gun for protection.
In the larger scheme of how to finance public education and Medicaid, the handgun permit is worth $31 million to the state this year - just a blip in a $5.1 billion budget.
Lawmakers say the phone calls and letters are starting to stream in from angry gun owners. In an election year, the issue puts mounting pressure on lawmakers, particularly those from upstate regions who often court conservative voters.
Already the anger being vented by gun owners is working. Asked last week which of the more than three dozen proposed fee hikes he would like to do away with, the Legislature's top Republican quickly named the gun permit as his first choice.
Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno called the fee plan "a $30 million hit" on "law-abiding citizens."
A day earlier, the normally restrained State Sen. Owen Johnson, a Long Island Republican and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, lashed out at a top Pataki official during a public hearing on Pataki's budget. Johnson dismissed claims that the new permit process will improve public safety.
"We're not going to make anyone safer. It's to help encourage people to give up their guns," Johnson said, calling the plan "anti-social" and an "excessive burden on honest, gun-carrying people."
Fee hikes are nothing new for Pataki. Though he boasts of not raising income taxes, the governor has filled his budget every year with an array of sometimes obscure and sometimes creative increases in fees on everyone from podiatrists to day care operators to drivers. The same is true this year.
Tracking handguns
The Pataki administration acknowledges it wants the money from the permit plan, but Chauncey Parker, the governor's top criminal justice adviser, last week told lawmakers the state must keep better and more current track of handguns. He compared it to the renewal of driver's or fishing licenses.
"Shouldn't we do the best we can to keep these records current?" he said.
State Police maintain a file of 1.2 million handgun permits, but those include permits dating back to 1936, and no one knows, because of the current lifetime licensing procedure, how many of those permits are still current or even where all those registered guns are today.
Last year, 13,400 new handgun permits were issued across the state, but that doesn't include someone updating an existing license to record the purchase of a new gun. There is also no precise statewide record of how many handguns are licensed, since a single permit can have multiple gun registrations on it.
In Erie County, about 1,000 new permits are issued each year, according to Willmer Fowler, the county's pistol permit division chief. In all, there are 69,275 handgun permits in the county.
Every gun purchase in New York requires an instant background check to ensure the owner has committed no crime that would prohibit owning a handgun.
But if someone buys a gun at age 21, for instance, the individual would never have to update the gun records. When someone dies, survivors are supposed to turn in the permits, but that often doesn't happen, gun owners acknowledge.
Supporters of Pataki's proposal note that New York City, Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk counties already have renewable handgun permit laws.
"What's important here is that we want a system that's up-to-date, and I don't think that's asking too much from legal gun owners," said Andy Pelosi, executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. "If a gun owner has not done anything to prohibit him from owning a gun, I don't see what's wrong with asking them to renew every five years." He said there is also increasing evidence showing once-legally registered guns end up in the hands of criminals.
One Manhattan lawmaker, a regular Pataki critic, praised the governor's handgun plan but said it may not go far enough. "It's absurd to say that renewable licenses are some sort of an unreasonable attack on gun ownership," said Sen. Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat who regularly proposes gun control legislation in Albany.
"Every five years is a very long period of time," he said of the renewal time. "I'd favor a shorter period of time."
Critics say the Pataki fee plan is just another step by the state to curtail the rights of gun owners, and they fear a move against handguns today will lead to crackdowns on rifles and shotguns.
"This is only hitting legitimate gun owners. You've got illegal guns all over the place, and they're forgetting about them," said Assemblyman Richard Smith, D-Hamburg, an avid outdoorsman and ally of the gun groups.
NRA attacks fee
The National Rifle Association also disputes that the plan has anything to do with gun safety, but instead is merely a scheme to balance the budget.
"The gun tax scheme is tantamount to a handgun ban for many hardworking, law-abiding New Yorkers who cannot afford the exorbitant increase in state and local fees," said NRA spokeswoman Kelly Hobbs.
Gun owners say they are being unfairly targeted, insisting the state is going after safety-conscious, legal gun owners in the guise of making the streets safer from gun crime.
"I think they'll do anything they can to deter us from owning guns, and this is a next step," said Bill Heichberger, an Orchard Park handgun owner. "We have a Second Amendment, and they've been trying to chip away at that for years."
But his first belief is that the plan is nothing more than a money grab by Albany, hitting low-income people who want a gun in their home for protection, or target shooters or hunters.
"The government is trying to find new ways to tax us. Next, they'll try to tax how many refrigerators I have in my home," he said.
Gun owners say that even though they don't re-register now, there are safeguards in existing law. They note, for instance, that county permit offices contact people arrested for driving while intoxicated or involvement in a domestic dispute and order them to turn in their handgun licenses and guns.
"I'm not a big gun rights advocate, but this is ridiculous," said Tom Schihl, a retired state prison guard from Buffalo and a handgun owner.
He said the state would do better slapping fines on people who commit crimes than on legal gun owners who undergo rigorous background checks. Like others, he believes the plan's side goal, in addition to raising money, is to control the number of guns in New York.
"They're trying to solve a problem by creating another problem," he said.
At Michael's banquet hall in Hamburg the other night, 146 upset gun owners turned out for a meeting of the Safari Club, a hunters' rights group. The topic: Pataki's plan.
Rigorous checks
Mike Shevlin, the group's Western New York president, who owns 40 guns, said his members go through rigorous background checks before they can own a gun.
"For the thief on the street, this isn't going to do anything. If he wants a gun, he's still going to get a gun," he said.
For a governor trying to burnish his conservative credentials both at home and nationally, the gun permit is winning him few friends on the right.
Conservatives note that four years ago Pataki pressed into law a sweeping gun-control bill that requires mandatory trigger locks, ballistic "fingerprinting" to better track weapons, background checks on gun buyers at gun shows and raised the handgun purchase age from 18 to 21.
"Gun owners helped elect Pataki originally," said Barry, the Buffalo gun owner. "And it was with his influence that they passed the semi-automatic ban three years ago. And now here he is with another very large and dangerous gun bill. So, no, we're not happy with Pataki."
e-mail: tprecious@buffnews.com
