Recertification deadline nears for gun owners
But the state police say they don't plan to take criminal action against those who are late.
KINGSTON, N.Y. » Hundreds of thousands of gun owners across the state have complied with the recertification requirements established by New York’s Secure Ammunition and Firearms (SAFE) Act, but state police say hundreds of thousands more still have yet to comply.
The deadline for pistol permit holders who were issued permits prior to the January 2013 enactment of the SAFE Act is Jan. 31.
Beau Duffy, the director of public affairs for the New York State Police, said the agency, which is responsible for processing the recertifications, doesn’t expect to take criminal action against those who don’t meet the deadline.
“I can’t speak for local law enforcement, but I can confirm that the state police will not take criminal enforcement action against individuals who have unknowingly failed to recertify,” Duffy said. “We’re also going to accept applications past the deadline.”
In January 2017, the state sent 372,388 notification letters to pistol permit holders outside of New York City, Westchester County and Long Island, reminding them of the recertification deadline but, Duffy said, “We’re operating under the assumption that we didn’t cover the whole universe with those letters.”
As of Jan. 26, he said, 280,000 people had recertified.
Duffy said the agency has been receiving “a couple thousand applications” a day. As the deadline gets closer, he said, he expects the agency to be “deluged” with applications.
John McGovern, chief civil officer for the Ulster County Sheriff’s Office, said that although the office isn’t involved in the recertification process, it has been getting inundated with telephone calls for people who need to update their permits before they can recertify with the state.
“‘We’re finding that when our citizens attempt to recertify, any discrepancy in their file requires them to come to us and fix things,” he said.
McGovern said the two issues his office is dealing with most are out-ofdate addresses and permit holders who don’t know the date their permit originally was issued.
“We have more than 36,000 permit holders, in Ulster County,” McGovern said. “If we have help only half, that’s 18,000-plus different transactions.
“It’s been a tremendous amount of work,” he said.
The SAFE Act, enacted in the aftermath of the December 2012 mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, establishes strict laws about what types of guns New Yorkers can own, limits the number of rounds an ammunition magazine can hold, and requires that pistol permit owners recertify every five years.
According to the law, failure to recertify results in the revocation of a person’s pistol permit.
Prior to the enactment of the SAFE Act, once a pistol permit was issued, it was good for life, assuming the holder didn’t commit a crime that would result in its revocation.
Duffy said under the law, the state police are required to create a statewide database of pistol permit owners throughout the state.
Duffy said pistol permit holders who are required to meet the Jan. 31 deadline can register online at firearms.troopers.ny.gov/ pprecert/welcome.faces or by downloading the recertification documents from the website or picking them up at any state police barracks.
“I can’t speak for local law enforcement, but I can confirm that the state police will not take criminal enforcement action against individuals who have unknowingly failed to recertify. We’re also going to accept applications past the deadline.”
— Beau Duffy, director of public affairs for the New York State Police