One of the first bills the House Public Safety and Crime Prevention committee passed this session was a bill to repeal gun permit requirements. Essentially, if this bill passes, someone who wants to buy a handgun or a semiautomatic military-style weapon from a federally-licensed dealer would not have to obtain a state permit.

That doesn’t sound very safe to me.

Right now, if you want to purchase a gun, there is a 7-day waiting period so that state law enforcement can run a background check on you. These local background checks are important because they often turn up information that isn’t in the federal system.

Supposedly the repeal of this required background check would get rid of duplication and make it easier on police officers, but law enforcement officials object to the repeal. They argued that the repeal could potentially put guns in the hands of mentally unstable criminals.

“We have just seen too many times the senseless shootings and firearm-related deaths, and so for us not to exhaust all of our efforts on these investigations really we’d be derelict of our duties,” said Dennis Flaherty, the executive director of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association.

With the federal system being so imcomplete, it would be irresponsible to do away with local background checks. Even our local police officers see the merits of making sure the folks who want to own guns are qualified to do so. Repealing this law is not the safe choice for Minnesota.

Head over to MPR VoteTracker to see which Republican legislators voted to move this bill forward to another committee.

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