Background

In October 2019, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) published an open letter to all federally licensed firearms dealers in Minnesota informing them that an earlier determination made in 2017 by BATFE was being rescinded. The earlier determination ruled that a valid Minnesota permit to carry qualified under federal law as an exception to the requirement that a NICS background check be performed on a prospective firearms transferee. The letter stated that since the permit to carry law does not require non-United States citizens to provide certain specified information to facilitate an immigration alien query (IAQ) check, the permit would not serve as an alternative to the NICS check. S.F. No. 3865 is intended to address this so that a permit to carry will once again be valid for this purpose.

Section 1 amends the permit to carry law to provide that the application must require that if the applicant is not a United States citizen, the applicant must disclose their country of birth and alien number or alien admission number.

Section 2 amends the permit to carry law to require sheriffs to ensure that an IAQ check is performed on noncitizen applicants.

Section 3 requires that the permit to carry application be updated within 60 days to conform with section 1.