Delaware House approved requirements to buy a handgun, including fingerprints and training

DOVER, Del. (AP) — Delaware’s Democrat-led House voted mostly along party lines Thursday to approve a bill requiring anyone who wants to buy a handgun to first be fingerprinted, undergo training and obtain permission from the state.

Thursday’s vote came exactly two weeks before a federal appeals court is scheduled to hear arguments on Maryland’s decade-old permit-to-purchase law, which was declared unconstitutional by a three-judge panel of the court in November. Only a handful of other states have similar permit laws, some of which are facing legal challenges. North Carolina repealed its permit law effective earlier this year.

Majority Leader Melissa Minor-Brown, chief House sponsor of the Delaware legislation, insisted that permit-to-purchase laws are effective in reducing gun deaths. “States with permit laws have 25 percent lower gun homicide rates, 50 percent lower gun suicide rates,” she said.

However in Maryland, the annual number of murders over the past decade have exceeded the total in 2013, when the state’s permit law was passed. (2014 is the sole year that is an exception.)

House lawmakers voted 23-16 for the legislation, which cleared the Democrat-controlled Senate on a party-line vote last May, before the Maryland court ruling. Two House Democrats joined Republicans in voting against the bill, which heads back to the Senate for consideration with several amendments from the House.

<bsp-list-loadmore data-module="" class=«PageListStandardB» data-gtm-region=«READ MORE» data-gtm-topic=«No Value» data-show-loadmore=«true» data-gtm-modulestyle=«List B»> <bsp-custom-headline custom-headline=«div»> READ MORE </bsp-custom-headline> <bsp-custom-headline custom-headline=«div»> Gov. Carney reflects on time as Delaware