Why Should Delaware Care?
Passing stricter gun control legislation, including permit to purchase regulations, has been long-debated and lobbied for in the Delaware General Assembly. Despite state agencies having 18 months to prepare for the start of permit to purchase this past November, computer systems for the permits are still incomplete, prompting pushback and questions about preparedness from gun store owners and other guns’ rights advocates.
Delaware’s newly-implemented restrictions on purchasing firearms have so far missed the mark, many gun shop owners say.
Since going into effect in November, statewide computer systems that are needed to enforce Delaware’s permit to purchase firearms law – which requires prospective gun owners to go through an eight-hour live firearm training course, get fingerprinted, and pass both local and federal background checks in order to obtain a permit to buy a handgun – have yet to come online.
This delay, gun shop owners say, means they must call the Delaware State Police Bureau of Identification each time a customer comes into their store with a permit to buy a gun to confirm that it is legitimate.
Some shop owners, like Gunnar Thompson of Lighthouse Guns & Gear in Selbyville, are calling the delay in getting the computer systems up and running evidence of the state’s unpreparedness for permit to purchase to go into effect.
“Rather than admitting they couldn’t get it done in time, they just kind of opened up a half-assed version,” Thompson said.
Also known as Senate Bill 2, Delaware’s permit to purchase firearms law was signed into law by then-Gov. John Carney in May 2024. It included an 18-month waiting period to allow state leaders to hire personnel and set up necessary enforcement systems before it took effect on Nov. 16, 2025.
John Peterson, a spokesperson for the Delaware Department of Safety and Homeland Security, which oversees the state police and the permit to purchase systems, defended the delay in implementation.
He wrote in a message to Spotlight Delaware that setting up the computer system, known as the Firearm Transaction Approval Program (FTAP), is “extremely complex,” and some federal delays led the state’s completion of the system to be pushed back.
Peterson said the FTAP program, used to carry out state-run gun background checks, was originally created in June 2022 but did not go into effect until the permit to purchase bill passed in 2024. The federal administration change last January and the government shutdown in the fall delayed FTAP’s implementation beyond the November 2025 deadline, he said.
He added that the needed computer systems, including FTAP and another used for federal background checks, are on track to be ready by the end of March. In the meantime, what he called the “fail-safe procedure” of having gun stores call the state police to verify permits, will remain in place.
Tyler Wright, a spokesperson for the Delaware State Police, said he does not consider the permit to purchase program to have had any implementation delays because the state was able to begin issuing permits before the Nov. 16 launch date, through the call-in system.
Wright also said the state police have been processing permit to purchase applications within three days, on average – substantially faster than the 30-day processing period granted by the law.
The department had received 619 permit to purchase applications as of Jan. 5. Of those applications, seven were denied, he added.
Gov. Matt Meyer’s office and legislators that sponsored the bill, including State Sen. Elizabeth Lockman (D-West Wilmington), Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend (D-Newark/Glasgow) and State Sen. Laura Sturgeon (D-Brandywine Hundred West), did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s request for comment about the delay in the system implementation.
The law has faced substantial legal challenges over the past year and a half by the Delaware State Sportsmens’ Association, the state’s National Rifle Association affiliate, and other guns’ rights advocates, including most recently an attempted temporary restraining order to halt implementation of the law 13 days before it went into effect in early November.
A federal judge declined to implement the restraining order in November, but the group is still seeking to challenge the constitutionality of the law in a federal appellate court, Sportsmens’ Association President Jeff Hague said.
Gun shops respond
A number of gun shop owners across the state say they take issue with the permit to purchase regulation as a violation of the Second Amendment. Beyond that, owners also say they object to the lack of communication and planning from the state about how the permitting process would function at their stores.
Joseph Wilson, owner of Freedom Firearms in Middletown, said the first correspondence he received from the state was early in the fall, scheduling a training session for all gun shops about how the computer system for permitting would function.
A few weeks before the law was scheduled to go into effect, Wilson said he received communication that the training was canceled, and that stores would need to call into the State Bureau of Identification to verify each purchase permit, instead of using an online server.
Since November, Wilson said he has not gotten any more updated information from the state about the status of the FTAP system, but he has heard anecdotally that the system is supposed to be ready by March.
Peterson, the Department of Safety & Homeland Security spokesperson, said the main computer system, FTAP, is being finished now. But the state still needs to do more testing on additional elements, like its “Do Not Sell Registry,” so the system will not be complete until the end of March.
He did not comment on any of the specific communications the department sent out to store owners throughout the fall.
Jenn Hagan, owner of Best Shot, a gun shop and indoor training facility in Lewes, said the extra step of having to call the state police to verify permits has been frustrating because it “just takes more time out of my staff’s day.”
At the same time, Hagan said her store has been down 60% to 65% in handgun sales since the law went into effect, which has led her to shorten some of her staff members’ hours to cut costs.
Wilson and Thompson, the Selbyville store owner, similarly said they have seen drastic drops in handgun sales, though neither said they have gotten to a point where they are concerned about their businesses staying afloat.
Firearm sales were down 66% in Delaware from November to December 2025, according to data from The Trace, a news organization that reports specifically on gun violence-related news in the United States.
A turn to concealed carry?
Active or former law enforcement officers and residents currently holding a Carrying Concealed Deadly Weapons permit, which allows people to carry a hidden firearm, are exempt from the state’s new permit to purchase statute for handguns.
Firearm training course instructors say they have seen a modest number of people taking the required training course since permit to purchase went into effect, and an equal, if not greater, increase in the number taking the concealed carry permit training course.
Bill Walters, owner of the 302 Tactical Operations training site in Wilmington, said he has had seven people complete the permit to purchase course since November.
Over the same time period, 80 people have completed the concealed carry training course, which includes virtually all of the same instruction, he said.
Walters said he has been encouraging people to seek a concealed carry permit, rather than a permit to purchase, because the concealed carry permit needs to be renewed less frequently than the permit to purchase, so it ultimately costs users less money in the renewal processes.
While prices can vary between training locations, most concealed carry and permit to purchase training courses cost between $150 and $200. In addition to the training course fees, individuals must pay $85 to get fingerprinted, bringing the total cost of the permit somewhere in the $200 to $300 range.
Hague, with Delaware’s NRA affiliate, said the increased cost for individuals to purchase a firearm, along with challenges people might have finding a spot in a training course, are only some of the objections his group has with the law.
“The law is racist,” Hague added. “It’s actually disproportionately discriminatory against low-income people of color, especially in Wilmington and Dover.”
John Biasiello, an instructor at Peace of Mind Firearms Training in Georgetown, said he started seeing an uptick in interest in the concealed carry course prior to November, when people began to realize that course would be an alternative option.
“As far as the training part of it is concerned, it’s basically the same,” Biasiello said of the two permit training courses. “The [state legislature] hasn’t been very creative when it comes to what the requirement is.”
To gun safety advocates, too, the increased interest in concealed carry permits is not a surprise.
Traci Manza Murphy, executive director of the Coalition for a Safer Delaware, said she anticipated more people turning to the concealed carry option.
Still, Murphy said she views the concealed carry route as in line with the goals of permit to purchase legislation because people have to go through an extensive background check process, including getting sworn affidavits of their eligibility from community members, in order to get a concealed carry permit.
“Concealed carry permit holders are among the safest Delawareans out there,” Murphy said. “They’re involved in negligible amounts of crime.”
Murphy said it could take two to six years to feel the full impacts of the permit to purchase requirement decreasing gun violence in Delaware.
She pointed to additional data from The Trace, which indicates that firearm sales in Delaware were down by 37% in December 2025 – the first month after permit to purchase went into effect – compared to the same last year.
While the long-term impacts of the state’s new restrictions remain to be seen, Murphy said the December decrease is initial evidence of more stringent training and background check policies preventing potentially unfit Delawareans from purchasing firearms.