Amid fears of crime, New York is seeing a rise in applications for gun permits

In 2022, pistols are displayed in a gun shop. (AP Photo/Marco Garcia, File)

NEW YORK – Amid persistent fears of crime, more than 13,300 New Yorkers applied for permits to carry guns in the city last year, a nearly double increase compared to 2022 – and the New York City Police Department’s financial results have been boosted by the shows an increase, according to a Daily News analysis.

Spokespeople for the NYPD and Mayor Eric Adams’ office said this week that they cannot definitively determine what is causing the spike in applications for gun permits. The firearms permit data does not show how many of the applications from 2023 and 2024 were actually approved and resulted in the issuance of new permits.

But NYPD data shows that the wave of gun seekers skyrocketed in the months after September 1, 2022, when a U.S. Supreme Court ruling struck down a New York law that required applicants for concealed carry permits to prove that they ‘had the right weapons’. cause” to carry a weapon for self-defense purposes.

Now that that law has been nullified, New York applicants can obtain a permit without proving a specific need for self-defense, as long as there is no other disqualifying reason, such as a prior felony conviction.

David, a firearms consultant who helps New York gun permit seekers with the process, said the explosion in applications comes as he has noticed more and more customers wanting to purchase a gun because they are afraid. While major crimes in the city have declined in recent years, they still remain above pre-pandemic levels.

“The most popular reason is certainly that they don’t feel as safe as they used to, with the protests, riots and crime,” David, who spoke on the condition that his last name not be used, told The News, referring to recent demonstrations against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

The new police data reviewed by The News shows that the NYPD received 13,369 applications for gun permits in 2023. That marked a significant jump from 2022, when the department received 7,407 applications, and 2021, when 4,665 applications came in, according to the data.

From January 1 through March 3, the most recent period for which data is available, the department received 3,358 applications, bringing the total number of permit applications submitted since January 1, 2023 to at least 16,727. If the application clip continues through March 3, the department will see about the same peak number of permit applications in 2024 as in 2023.

Gerald Esposito, owner of Esposito’s Custom Guns in Queens, said he sees the increase in permit applicants as a good thing overall, but is concerned that current gun training requirements for applicants in New York are too lax.

“It’s 16 hours in the classroom and two hours at the shooting range. I took the class and it is a very simple class. I wouldn’t let anyone who was in that class hold a gun next to me. I was afraid of some people in the class. One mistake can be a very big mistake,” said Esposito, whose store caters primarily to customers who need custom weapons for target shooting. “The training needs to be strengthened or strengthened…I would like everyone to have the right to carry a gun, but I also want to be safe.”

While data reviewed by The News does not reveal a specific reason for the increase in permit applications, it comes as surveys show New Yorkers are still concerned about crime in the city, which police data shows is still above pre-COVID pandemic levels.

Amid the rising applications, data from Adams’ office shows the NYPD is on track to collect $6.3 million in gun permit application fees this fiscal year, which began July 1, 2023 and runs through June 30. to fetch. or denies an application, the NYPD requires applicants to pay a processing fee that costs as much as $340 per permit.

Of the $6.3 million in proceeds, $1.4 million is labeled in budget documents as “additional” money raised as part of a so-called Program to Eliminate the Gap (PEG), which was implemented by Adams in November to reduce municipal spending. and boost revenue flows amid fiscal uncertainties. fueled by costs related to the city’s migrant crisis.

Adams spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak said the NYPD was not mandated to generate a certain amount of revenue from gun permits as part of the PEG. She would not say whether the revenue increase was the result of specific actions by the NYPD.

For the next fiscal year, which starts July 1, the NYPD expects to bring in $2.77 million in revenue from gun permits, less than half of what it brings in this fiscal year, budget documents say. Mamelak would not say why revenues are expected to fall so sharply.

The NYPD did not immediately make weapons licensing unit officials available for an interview.

The revelations about gun permits come after a Manhattan Institute poll earlier this month found that 62% of likely voters in the city — including majorities across all racial groups and political parties — feel the city is less safe today than in 2020, while only 11% believe safety has improved over the same period.

NYPD data confirms at least some of that sentiment.

The data shows that the number of major crimes in the city is up 39.3% so far this year compared to the same period in 2019. Looking at the same comparative point in time, the number of shooting victims has increased. 16.7% and the number of shooting incidents increases by 11.1%.

Looking at the more recent past, major crimes in the city are down 0.9% compared to 2022 and 3.1% compared to last year. The data shows that the number of victims of shootings and shooting incidents has fallen even further, by 39.1% and 39.5% respectively compared to 2022.

Echoing David, the firearms consultant, a gun shop owner in Nassau County told The News that he has noticed in his own community that more people are applying for gun permits because of “what’s going on around the world.”

“It has taken on an extra sense of urgency,” said the owner, who spoke on the condition that neither he nor his store be identified by name. “People are afraid of what is going on.”

The unit that processes all city gun permits is the NYPD Licensing Division, housed at the department’s headquarters in Manhattan.

A number of members of that unit have been convicted over the years of taking bribes in exchange for expediting permits. That includes David Villanueva, an ex-division supervisor who was sentenced to four months in prison in 2019 after admitting that he and other members of the unit took bribes to approve 100 gun permits that should never have been issued. Spokespeople for Mamelak and NYPD did not return requests for comment on whether any anti-corruption protocols have been put in place amid the recent increase in applications for gun permits.