Would-be gun owners chafe at long waits and red tape

Malikqua Burton’s pistol sits in a lockbox at Master Class Shooters Supply in Monroe, NY, until the moment she can legally pick it up. Burton, a 48-year-old Newburgh nurse, has been waiting nearly two years to hear back about her pistol permit application – a process that, by law, should take six months.

In the wake of a pair of back-to-back shootings in Newburgh, Burton feels renewed anxiety about being able to defend herself. A Sept. 28 shooting left a man dead and a 5-year-old wounded; and the following afternoon, an away Warwick Valley High School football game at Newburgh Free Academy became the site of a parking lot shooting that injured three people.

“With those things happening, I really want to have this follow through,” said Burton.

While her delay is extreme, Burton’s predicament is not unique. Many gun owners are chafing against long wait times and red tape in the midst of a historic gun control tug-of-war between the federal government and a handful of blue states, led by New York. On Oct. 6, a federal judge blocked large portions of a month-old New York State gun law restricting who can carry a gun and where, dealing a major blow to states’ power over concealed carry.

“I’m trying to digest it. I’m not a lawyer,” said Maria Mann, better known as The Gun Lady, from behind the counter of her bustling Port Jervis gun shop. She held up the 53-page decision, which she had printed out to read. “It’s a start. It’s a start for us gun owners,” she said.

Governor Kathy Hochul blasted the federal decision, calling it “deeply disappointing that the judge wants to limit my ability to keep New Yorkers safe and to prevent more senseless gun violence.”

For her part, Burton isn’t worried about the downstream effect of bringing another gun into Newburgh, because she would never use it for any other reason than to protect herself, she said.

She bought a shotgun and rifle in 2020, when she appeared in a story in this paper about the changing face of gun ownership. But those won’t help her on her way to work at the trauma unit of the Mid-Hudson Regional Hospital in Poughkeepsie in the middle of the night. The parking lot is not well lit, she said. A truck recently followed her, pulling up beside her and motioning her to roll down her window before complimenting her car and driving off.

“Anything could happen,” said Burton. “I’m not afraid, but just would like to be cautious. I take extra cautions: I don’t stop in the middle of the night for gas.”

Burton has been calling and calling the Orange County Sheriff about her application, to no avail. In Orange County, the sheriff’s office must sign off on pistol permit applications, which are then handed over to one of three superior court judges for a decision. “I was almost going to take it personal,” Burton said on Oct. 5, after getting off the phone with a sympathetic employee at the sheriff’s office. “The guy said today, they are so backed up. He keeps using Covid as an excuse.”

“We’ve been backlogged since 2018,” said Undersheriff Kenneth Jones. So are most other populous New York counties, he said. Partly a hangover from the Covid shutdown, the backlog is also due to the skyrocketing number of people who want handguns, he said. “Year after year it keeps growing and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. It increased through every president, so it had nothing to do with politics. Just anecdotally, it was a matter of security for most people. And here in Orange County, very low-crime county, why would you feel unsafe? I don’t think there’s a real answer to that. People feel the way they feel.”

The gun control tug-of-war

New York passed its new gun control legislation on the heels of a June Supreme Court decision that broadened access to concealed carry, striking down a century-old New York law that had strictly limited the carrying of weapons in public. As of Sept. 1, the Concealed Carry Improvement Act bolstered the vetting process, increased training requirements and banned guns in a long list of so-called sensitive public places including public transit, government buildings, religious centers, schools, homeless shelters, theaters and stadiums.

Since then, the process of getting a gun, already a patchwork affair in New York, has gotten more confusing than ever, said Damon Finch, president of the Hudson Valley Nubian Gun Club. “It was already difficult enough in Orange County, and in the Hudson Valley, where the rules weren’t consistent,” said Finch, a gun instructor and Air Force veteran. “I like the fact that you do require training consistently across the state, but in the same breath, could the average person afford that much training?”

“Of course it’s confusing,” said Jim Gully, owner of Master Arms in Sloatsburg, NY. “The governor of this state, instead of saying to herself, ‘Well how can we comply with the Supreme Court,’ she thumbed her nose at the Supreme Court and said, ‘You think the restrictions were tough before? Wait’ll you see what I’m going to do now.’ That’s exactly what happened. But I’m not the only one that feels like that, and she’s going to feel it in November,” he said.

In response to the new law – which requires law enforcement to review applicants’ social media accounts going back three years – the Orange County Sheriff’s pistol permit unit went dark for over a month, from late August to Oct. 1.

Leading up to the pause, the unit had been slogging its way through the pending applications that piled up during the Covid shutdown. They had gotten the pile down from over 2,000 to about 800, said Jones.

Orange County was among seven counties that hit the brakes in reaction to the new law, said Jones. “To us, it was a poorly drafted law,” he said. “It required us to rethink how we’re doing our business.”

They’re now doing double-duty to catch up on fingerprinting by the end of October, he said.

Elsewhere upstate, a half-dozen sheriffs made clear that they had no intention of aggressively enforcing the new restrictions on where people can carry guns, the New York Times reported Oct. 9. “I don’t think sheriffs should be that political,” said Jones. He agrees, though, with the sentiment that the new law is a misguided result of culture clash.

“The legislature that is dominated by the New York culture mentality, they fear these cowboys upstate that have gun permits coming into Manhattan and turning it into Dodge City,”he said.

The hiatus at the pistol permit unit will exacerbate already lengthy wait times for peoplelike Burton.

“That’s the problem with the Orange County Sheriff’s department. They’re just ignoring the law,” said George Rogero, an NRA-certified firearm training counselor who operates OCshooters.com, a web site about gun rights. “They’ve just never been willing to commit the manpower necessary in their processing,” said Rogero, who has sued the sheriff’s office over a separate issue.

While state law specifies a six-month deadline to process an application – or written notice to the applicant if there is good reason for a delay – there is no penalty for missing the deadline, said Rogero. “Because of that, they can violate the six-month requirement, and nothing will happen to them.”

Orange County’s pistol permit unit consists of three full-time employees and 18 to 20 part-timers, said Jones. “Besides school security deputies, manpower-wise it’s the second largest unit we have.” He points out, too, that the law specifies six months from the time the application hits the judge’s desk, which is the next stop after the sheriff’s office.

“There is only so much manpower that is available, in addition to the normal duties of the sheriff’s office, that you can commit. A budget’s a budget,” said Jones. “You have to do more with less.”

The new training regimen

As of Sept. 1, New York standards require concealed carry applicants to have 16 hours of in-person classroom training plus two hours of live-fire training, and pass a written and proficiency test.

“I’ve just been tasked with getting the curriculum into a format that meets the minimum standards, and that’s what I’ve been busy doing this month,” said Sheryl Thomas, who teaches civilian handgun courses at the sheriff’s office. The first session of the new pistol permit course – which now consists of three six-hour classes and costs $350 – kicked off Tues., Oct. 11. The course culminates with a written exam, two hours of range training with non-lethal pellets called “simunition” and a proficiency test. “We’re scheduled out until January,” she said.

“Right now everyone’s scrambling to create classes and to find classes, so the applicants are in a bit of a maze,” said Jones. “I know some of the clubs – the hunting and sportsmen’s clubs around the county – are trying to catch up and design a program and launch it.”

Orange County is among the New York counties that set a higher bar for would-be gun owners than what the state requires. The county has long required concealed carry applicants to take a basic safety course, said Thomas, while the state had no safety training requirement prior to September. Additionally, Orange County residents seeking a “premises permit” – to keep a pistol at home or at a business – are required to take a three-hour basic handgun safety course, said Thomas. That training is still not mandated by the state.

“We’re not really sure where everything is going to end up,” said Thomas, referring to legal challenges to the new state law. “But definitely training – and that’s been our motto here since the beginning – training is very important. I think that any amount of training, when you’re becoming a handgun owner, and you also want to have the option to carry for defensive reasons, is beneficial.”

Other instructors have held off rewriting their curricula until the rules get ironed out in court. “When they say you’ve got to teach suicide prevention, I’m not certified in teaching suicide prevention,” said Rogero. “I don’t know where I would go to get certified. I’m not certified in conflict resolution,” he said. “It’s just Hochul and the other people having a hissy fit and just making a whole list of things.”

Meanwhile, in limbo...

Nearly two years into her wait, Burton is still keeping her skills sharp at gun ranges. A van of gun club members takes regular road trips, traveling 45 minutes to shooting ranges in New Jersey, Connecticut or Pennsylvania. There, Burton and others in her boat can practice shooting a handgun while they await their permits.

“I’m hearing from other counties, people that I know did theirs after me and then got theirs,” said Burton. “That’s extremely frustrating.”

She’s been trying to keep abreast of the new rules while she waits, but it’s starting to feel like a fool’s errand. “As soon as we learn some stuff, within weeks something changed,” said Burton.

In the meantime, Burton has searched online for additional tips to keep herself safe at night: look around before getting out of the car, turn off your lights right away; don’t sit in your car for more than two minutes after getting to your destination. One bright spot is that her hospital removed a big bush from the parking lot, improving visibility. “It’s still a thing to think about, because like I said, the parking lot is not very well lit,” she said.

All she can do is keep on calling, and waiting. “I’m going to keep staying steady on following up,” she said. “‘Cause I really don’t know what else to do at this point.”