Nikos Frazier/Quad City Times via AP
People vote at the Scott County Administrative Center in Davenport, Iowa, November 7, 2022.
Last week’s Biden administration announcement of a final Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives rule strengthening firearms licensing and background check protocols for private gun dealers is good news in a country being transformed into an open-air firing range. The rule requires firearms sellers regardless of the venue to secure proper licenses for themselves and conduct background checks on prospective buyers to ensure that guns aren’t transferred to convicted felons, domestic abusers, or others prevented from owning them. It is the largest expansion of background checks since the 1993 Brady Bill and covers tens of thousands of additional dealers, a development that will have a “monumental impact” on controlling firearm proliferation, says Jessie Ojeda, a state policy attorney at the Giffords Law Center.
Closing off this one spigot in a society plagued by almost daily mass shootings and lethal political rhetoric constitutes a major step forward against groups bent on fomenting some type of epic election-year cataclysm. At a time when gun sales have reached record levels, the rule helps address concerns about political violence, a phenomenon that until very recently was almost unknown in the United States. The January 6th insurrection; the attempted attacks on the Idaho, Michigan, and Oregon legislatures; and the emergence of masked and armed people who openly carried weapons around ballot drop boxes in places like Maricopa County, Arizona, have made all too clear this new kind of risk. This year, we’ve heard the repeated insertion of the word “bloodbath” into the election-year lexicon by former President Donald Trump, to label everything from decline in the auto industry’s fortunes to President Biden’s stances on immigration.
In response, Democratic state lawmakers are moving to ban guns at polling locations and related places such as drop boxes and counting centers, with varying degrees of success. In Virginia, the General Assembly passed a bill that extended zones of exclusion around polling and related facilities, such as voter registration offices. But the measure barely passed the Democratic- controlled House of Delegates and Senate, and Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed the measure in late March. When the legislature reconvened this week to deal with the vetoes, the Democrats did not have the votes to override his veto of that bill. Also in March, Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico signed a ban on carrying guns within 100 feet of polling places and drop boxes that includes exemptions for concealed-carry permit holders and others.
The threat of intimidation that carrying firearms signals for many people is the basis for a California bill, the Protecting Elections from Armed Coercion and Extremism (PEACE) Act, introduced by Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park) and supported by the Giffords Center and the Brennan Center. Conceived as an update to 1965 Voting Rights Act–era laws against intimidation, the proposal, if enacted, would deem any person visibly carrying a “firearm, imitation firearm, or toy gun” while also carrying out election activities “as presumed to have engaged in prohibited intimidation.” “No state currently expressly recognizes the carrying or presence of a firearm at or near polling sites as intimidation,” says Ojeda.
States are stepping up because the Supreme Court provided some limits to its pro-gun posturing in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen (2022), which declared that New York’s prohibitions on carrying guns in public were unconstitutional. Although that ruling was a net negative for gun control, the justices did define some “sensitive places” where banning guns would be permissible, such as legislative and other government buildings, courthouses, and polling locations. The high court made a similar distinction regarding schools in District of Columbia v. Heller (2007). (In Vermont, Ojeda notes that the Sportsmen’s Alliance declined to oppose the pending polling-place gun ban bill precisely because of the Supreme Court’s “sensitive places” language.)
Not surprisingly, many election officials support the bans.
Tim Carey, a law and policy adviser at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, says that “states feel a degree of comfort that they don’t really have in many other areas of gun regulation; that at least around polling places, the Supreme Court seems to say this is allowable, and we’ve seen states taking the Court’s word on that.”
The Violence and Democracy Impact Tracker (VDIT)—compiled by Protect Democracy and Johns Hopkins University’s SNF Agora Institute—found that 100 global scholars it surveyed consistently ranked threats including intimidation, direct threats, and physical harm to American electoral processes among their top five areas of concern. Since August of 2022, the group has found that incidents of such threats and harassment are widespread, and the apprehensions they engender cut across party lines, particularly among women and people of color, who are often targeted.
Preliminary VDIT data collected from local officials showed that threats were more pervasive on the West Coast, and in the Southwest and the coastal Southeast, as well as in Alaska, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York. Election officials and poll workers are also more likely to experience death threats and threats of physical harm.
Not surprisingly, many election officials support the bans. Rather than carrying weapons themselves (as some have proposed that teachers do) or continuing to work in what has only recently become a dangerous occupation, many are exiting election administrative and volunteer positions in “historically unprecedented numbers,” says Ojeda. “They’re doing so in large part because of their fear of firearms and shootings.”
So far, only one state, Colorado, has reversed firearms preemption laws that prohibited municipalities from implementing their own gun control measures.
Most states have firearm preemption laws, but in 2021, Colorado dispensed with preemption after a Boulder supermarket shooting—and Boulder, along with the cities of Edgewater, Lafayette, Louisville, and Superior, has passed ordinances that prohibit guns in sensitive places, the open carrying of guns, the sale and ownership of ghost guns and other firearm devices, and other measures. According to the Giffords Center, six states—Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island—have pending bills that would lift local preemption laws.
“By initiating these prohibitions of firearms at polling places, states are sending a clear message to all their voters,” says Carey. “The right to keep and bear arms does not usurp the right to participate in democracy, because voting is the foundation of our country and our governance. Without that, all other rights lose meaning.”
