Rhode Island group tackles permit issuance standards

From the Ocean State:

A behind-the-scenes tug of war has been going on between the state’s police chiefs and gun ownership advocates over how local departments should decide who is allowed to carry a concealed firearm in public.

For more than a year, members and volunteers with the Citizens’ Rights Action League Rhode Island, a group of gun-rights supporters, have been showing up in police stations across the state, demanding to see the individual department’s standards for deciding who gets a concealed-weapons permit.

Police departments were required to develop such policies under the terms of a 2002 Superior Court decision in a suit brought by Smithfield resident James W. Archer, head of the gun-rights organization.

Archer, a former Republican Town Committee chairman, said the object of the visits to departments was not to get a permit. The aim, he said, was to be denied one — so the league can file a lawsuit that would produce a decision, like in the 2002 case, which would roll back what the league sees as unconstitutional restrictions on gun ownership.

“What we’re trying to do here is construct a whole new body of law,” Archer said.
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Archer said he sees psychological testing not as a tool to make better decisions, but as a hurdle to dissuade potential applicants. Having lost the ability to pass the responsibility to the state, he said, police chiefs were looking for ways to deter applicants from even asking.

“We’ve won, they’ve accepted that,” he said of the issue of evaluating applications. “Now they’re finding reasons not to issue.” ...

Article here.