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Cory Booker’s Gun Control Plan Calls for National Licensing Program

Senator Cory Booker, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, unveiled a 14-part plan for gun control on Monday.Credit...Scott McIntyre for The New York Times

Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey rolled out a broad plan on Monday that seeks to combat gun violence through measures including a gun licensing program and a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Aspects of Mr. Booker’s 14-part plan are among the most progressive gun-control measures suggested by a candidate seeking the Democratic nomination for president and are likely to face sharp criticism from gun-rights advocates like the National Rifle Association.

“My plan to address gun violence is simple — we will make it harder for people who should not have a gun to get one,” Mr. Booker said in a statement. “I am sick and tired of hearing thoughts and prayers for the communities that have been shattered by gun violence.”

The most notable piece of Mr. Booker’s plan is the proposed gun licensing program, which would enact minimum standards for gun ownership nationwide. Under such a program, a person seeking to buy a gun would need to apply for a license in much the same way one applies for a passport.

Mr. Booker’s campaign said the process would involve submitting fingerprints and sitting for an interview, and would require applicants to complete a certified gun safety course. Each applicant would also undergo a federal background check before being issued a gun license, which would be valid for up to five years.

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Other parts of the plan include banning bump stocks, which enable semiautomatic weapons to fire faster; limiting bulk purchases of firearms; and closing the loopholes that allow domestic abusers and people on terrorist watch lists to obtain guns. And the plan calls for the I.R.S. to investigate the N.R.A.’s tax-exempt status, an issue the New York attorney general is also exploring, causing considerable turmoil among the group’s leadership.

The N.R.A. did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Daniel Webster, the director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins University, said that gun control advocates and politicians had long called for comprehensive background checks and an assault-weapon ban. But he said that research had shown that those policies, when implemented at the state level, were not nearly as effective at reducing gun homicides and suicides as gun licensing programs for purchasers.

A 2018 study found that 63 percent of gun owners supported requiring a person to obtain a license from a local law enforcement agency before buying a gun; support for gun licensing among people who do not own a gun was even higher.

“I’m glad to see Senator Booker look at the actual data and show some political courage,” said Mr. Webster, who said he was among the gun policy experts consulted by Mr. Booker’s staff.

“We’ve got a crisis here,” he said. “And if you’re just trying to say, ‘O.K., what’s the easiest political thing to do,’ you’re likely to aim low and have minimal impact. So I salute Senator Booker for saying we’ve got a huge problem, and you don’t solve huge problems with tiny changes.”

In a statement, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, a gun-rights organization, described Mr. Booker’s plan as a way to turn a “Second Amendment right into a government-regulated privilege.”

“Booker’s brainstorm is nothing more than a combination of every pie-in-the-sky idea on the gun control wish list,” said Alan Gottlieb, the group’s chairman.

The renewed focus on gun violence comes just over a week after a gunman opened fire inside a synagogue in Poway, Calif., with an AR-15-style weapon and days after a man with a pistol walked into a classroom at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and killed two people.

Mr. Booker obliquely cited those shootings in announcing his plan on Monday, calling gun violence in the United States an “epidemic.”

In the six-plus years since 26 people were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., some states have been busy enacting gun-control measures, including a handful of gun licensing laws like the one Mr. Booker is proposing.

Still, America’s gun laws remain among the least restrictive in the Western world, and several other Democratic presidential candidates have also addressed the issue.

Senator Kamala Harris of California has pledged to deal with gun violence through executive action that would, among other things, close one of the loopholes targeted by Mr. Booker’s plan. Representative Eric Swalwell of California has made gun control a central focus of his campaign. And both former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont have lengthy records grappling with gun safety.

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Mr. Biden has long supported stiffer gun laws, having introduced legislation as a Delaware senator that sought to ban assault weapons; he later led a gun-violence prevention task force as vice president. But critics have highlighted his support of a 1994 crime bill that many Democrats have condemned for contributing to mass incarceration, especially of people of color.

Mr. Sanders’s record on gun control came under scrutiny when he faced off with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016. He was criticized for, among other things, having supported a 2005 bill that gave gun manufacturers legal immunity, but he has since changed his position on that issue.

That bill, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, is a specific target of Mr. Booker’s plan. In his announcement Monday, Mr. Booker said that if elected president, he would repeal it.

“Senator Booker’s plan is bold and thoughtful,” said Peter Ambler, the executive director of Giffords, the gun violence prevention organization led by former Representative Gabrielle Giffords. He added that it was a “positive sign” that presidential candidates were “coming to the table with serious policy proposals to make our country safer.”

Mr. Booker has focused a significant portion of his platform on a topic connected to gun control: criminal justice reform. He and Ms. Harris seek to compete with Mr. Biden for support from African-Americans, who are disproportionately affected by gun violence and incarcerated at significantly higher rates than white Americans.

Mr. Booker has often cited his time as the mayor of Newark when discussing his firsthand experience with those issues. In an interview that aired Sunday on CNN, he drew on that experience again, standing on a Newark street corner where he said a man who once lived with him had been fatally shot by a man wielding an assault rifle.

Speaking about gun violence, he said, “I am going to come at this like folks have never seen before.”

John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy organization that seeks to end gun violence, said he had seen a “seismic shift” from past campaigns, when the issue of gun violence was considered the “third rail” of American politics.

“Today what we’re seeing is people coming out muscularly for gun safety,” Mr. Feinblatt said. “We’re early on in the 2020 cycle, and I think you’re going to see more and more of this.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 13 of the New York edition with the headline: Booker’s Plan on Guns Would Seek Licensing Of Owners Nationwide. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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