Friday, July 8, 2011

Gun carry permit revoked

Before January, sheriffs had discretion in issuing the permits and could place restrictions on the licenses. With the change, sheriffs are directed to issue permits to applicants who meet training requirements and aren't barred from possessing firearms because of a criminal record or mental health reasons.

"The number of revocations has increased since the new law, and the nature of the types of offenses that have occurred has also increased,"[Sheriff] Thompson said.

He said revocations before the new law were rare and minor.
Gun permit revoked after altercation in parking lot

Numbers, sheriff???

I predicted that each revocation (justified or not) of a carry permit would get media coverage and I'm just not seeing it. Not to say it hasn't happened before this incident, but I haven't heard of a rash of revocations. And there's not enough details in this case to make an informed opinion.

I would say that the carry permit process has been so successful that more county sheriffs' departments are giving classes to compete with the commercial certified instructors that have been giving classes around the state. That brings in another 30-50 bucks on top of the permit fee into the county coffers.

My county sheriff is offering classes now. But he's not one of the critics of the carry law.

2 comments:

Robert Fowler said...

I haven't seen much about permit holders either. I wonder if we will ever get the whole truth about this incident. There's been a pretty good discussion about it at IFC. All the news report ever said was there was a minor accident and she racked the slide on her Glock. Was she in some danger? They don't tell us. Of course the liberal press is going to vilify any permit holder that so much as sneezes wrong.

strandediniowa said...

Robert, the media will fit a story to the narrative that they want.

You're right that we don't know the whole story, that's why I want to reserve judgement on her.

One thought I had on the revoked numbers: if the sheriff can hand pick the permit holders to a limited number of pristine and pure citizens, of course the numbers would be lower than now.

You know as well as I that in some counties only the well connected friends of the sheriff could get a permit. We have a much broader ranger of characters now and large number of permits in citizens' hands.