Calling it a “common-sense approach,” two Democratic senators from New Jersey are pushing a bill to require anyone who wants to buy or receive a gun to obtain a federal firearm license. Second Amendment advocates say such a law would create a de facto federal gun registry and could violate the rights of gun owners. 

Senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim are the sponsors of the Federal Firearm Licensing Act. Several Democrats from states with strict gun laws have signed on as cosponsors. Among them are Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Adam Schiff of California.

“If a license is required to drive a car, it should be required to own a gun,” Mr. Booker said in a release. This is the third time Mr. Booker has introduced the legislation. Proposals in 2022 and 2023 did not receive a vote.

The proposal would set up a list of hoops to jump through for anyone who wants to buy a gun.  Among them is a mandatory safety training course with a written test and hands-on instruction. Applicants would also need to undergo a federal background check and renew their license every five years.

Another provision in the proposed legislation would allow the Justice Department to strip a license if the individual is determined to pose a danger to themselves or others. The law would require “regular checks” by the FBI to ensure that gun owners remain in compliance.

The largest gun-owners club in America, the National Rifle Association, says the law would have zero impact on crime. “Criminals overwhelmingly obtain their firearms through illegal channels and will never be deterred by state and federal laws,” the group states.

Several states have licensing laws but no federal requirement exists. Proponents, including the Giffords Law Center, claim state licensing laws lead to fewer gun homicide cases.

“Families are demanding Congress step up and deliver commonsense steps that prevent guns from getting into the wrong hands and protect innocent lives from the scourge of gun violence in our country,” Mr. Kim said. “Too many families are heartbroken, and too many communities have been torn apart by senseless gun violence.”

The proposal appears to be dead on arrival with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress. The executive director of Duke University’s Center for Firearms Law, Andrew Willinger, says even if such legislation passed, it would face a court challenge on constitutional grounds, though perhaps not the Second Amendment. 

“I’m not sure the strongest challenge is actually under the Second Amendment — given the current Court’s specific approval of gun licensing so long as it is based on objective criteria,” Mr. Willinger tells The New York Sun. “By contrast, some cases challenging state use of gunowner data — like in California where the state allowed agencies to share that information with researchers in some circumstances — have brought claims based on a 14th Amendment right to informational privacy as well.”

Mr. Willinger notes that current law differentiates between licensing and a registry, even though functionally a national license-to-purchase system would resemble a registry in many ways.