A pair of newly introduced Michigan bills targeting firearms retailers may contain a built-in legal trap — one that could make compliance with both state and federal law simultaneously impossible.
Democratic State Sen. Stephanie Chang authored Senate Bill 853 and Senate Bill 854, legislation that would layer new state requirements onto Michigan gun store owners on top of existing federal mandates already in place.
Under SB 853, every firearms retailer operating in Michigan would be required to secure a state-issued license no later than 18 months following the bill becoming law.
The catch: that state license requires the applicant to already possess a Federal Firearms License — the federal credential dealers must hold to legally sell guns commercially.
But federal law has its own prerequisite. The ATF makes clear on its official website that a Federal Firearms License will not be issued to any applicant who is not already in full compliance with the laws of their state and locality.
ATF application instructions spell it out directly: “State laws or local ordinances may require additional licenses or permits for firearms licenses.”
Read together, the two sets of rules point in opposite directions. Michigan would demand a federal license before granting a state license, while the federal government would require state compliance — and potentially a state license — before approving the federal one.
Both bills currently sit before the Michigan Senate Committee on Civil Rights, Judiciary and Public Safety. Chang chairs that committee. A hearing was scheduled for Tuesday, April 28.
SB 854 operates independently of the licensing paradox but introduces its own set of costly mandates. Gun store owners would be required to install and maintain comprehensive video surveillance systems, with cameras running continuously during all business hours and motion-detection recording engaged after closing time.
The footage must be clear enough to identify individual firearm purchasers — a standard that effectively demands high-definition camera equipment throughout the premises — and must be preserved for six full years.
The data demands of that requirement are staggering. Optiview, a surveillance equipment manufacturer, calculates that a 16-camera system recording at 1080p eats through approximately 640 gigabytes of storage daily, totaling close to 19 terabytes every month.
Western Digital’s own storage calculator puts the annual burden of a 12-camera 1080p system at more than 181 terabytes — meaning smaller retailers would need to invest in what amounts to a dedicated server infrastructure just to stay legal.
NRA spokesperson Justin Davis told the Daily Caller News Foundation that gun control advocates are deliberately pivoting their strategy toward licensing restrictions.
“As they see these hardware bans are coming under immense scrutiny and hopefully soon the Supreme Court does their job and shoots down these ridiculous gun bans, they’re looking to find their next off-ramp for what their next boondoggle will be for gun control, and that is going after law-abiding FFLs,” Davis said.
Davis argued the bills are engineered to squeeze out smaller dealers who lack the legal and financial resources to navigate the new requirements.
“Because if they can restrict the opportunity to buy firearms from the legal dealers, then that means less people will be able to buy firearms and what this really does is it doesn’t really attack the major manufacturers and distributors, it really goes after these mom-and-pop stores that don’t have a team of lawyers to go through this insane amount of paperwork,” he said.
On the surveillance storage demands specifically, Davis told the DCNF: “Just the storage of, of data that’s required to have, you know, whatever timeline they put on for the amount of years or days or months to have all that footage stored, you’d have to have these massive server rooms.”
Michigan is not the first state to see this type of legislation. Maine’s House of Representatives rejected a comparable FFL-targeting bill on April 9.
Davis also pointed to the timing of these bills relative to the April 26 assassination attempt on President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, noting that anti-Second Amendment groups are emphasizing firearm access in its aftermath.
The suspect, Cole Allen, legally purchased both a shotgun and a handgun in California — a state whose gun laws have earned praise from the Brady Campaign, Giffords, and Everytown, and which maintains a statewide record of firearm sales, bans on so-called assault weapons, and a prohibition on private gun transfers.
The Justice Department addressed the broader legislative landscape in a statement to the DCNF: “The Second Amendment Section continues to monitor legislative action across the United States and will enforce Second Amendment rights as necessary to ensure state and local laws are implemented within the confines of Supreme Court jurisprudence.”
Neither Chang nor the ATF returned requests for comment on the apparent contradiction embedded within the legislation.
