If a person is to be allowed to have a concealed carry permit I feel they should have to do the following.
Appear in front of their local sheriff or head of police in their area and have a sit down meeting. They should produce paperwork showing;
They have taken a class on concealed carry and can handle a gun safely.
Show paperwork about why they need to carry a gun.
Have had a background check.
They can provide a list of at least 10 names of persons who will vouch for their character. At least 1 of them must be their doctor and another must be in a prominent position of leadership or management with a business, religious, or civic organization.
Can show they have a place to safely store the gun.
I firmly feel a law enforcement professional with more than 10 years experience working with criminals and dangerous people, and who knows the community, can within minutes of shaking your hand, looking you in the eye, and talking with you can decide if your worthy of a concealed carry permit.
Here is how it would work out:
Lets say Joe the contractor wants a permit. He works in dangerous parts of town and has been robbed before. The only blemishes on his background check were over 10 years ago as a teenager, mostly alcohol related. He gets vouchers from 10 men and women in the community including his doctor, the store manager of his supplier, Jane the bank manager where he does business, and several people he has done work for. He sits down with Phil Griffin, a 12 year veteran county sheriff. Joe hands Phil his voucher list and Phil hands it to a deputy who then proceeds to call the different people. Phil and Joe sit and talk about various issues of why Joe needs a gun, his problems in his past, Joe’s family (he has 3 children - Joe has a gun safe), and Joes feelings about when and why he would use a gun. 10 minutes later the deputy comes in to say he’s verified the names of 4 people on the list and Sheriff Phil knows one of the other people.
The problem with your plan is that it puts the exercise of a right under the discretion of a local official. Because this discretion has been used to effectively eliminate the issuance of permits in some areas, there has been a fairly successful movement to pass what are called “shall issue” laws which remove the sheriff’s discretion if a list of objective criteria are met. The system you propose exists in some states already. It is called “may issue”, and it often results in permits being difficult or impossible to obtain. Maryland and California are two states that operate similarly to what you propose.
Great idea! Because I’ve never seen any indication that the judgement of local law enforcement personnel has ever been anything other than 100% correct at all times!
I would oppose it for the reason given by Crotalus. Most states have gone away from stringent / arbitrary CCW requirements and I support their decision. CCW holders are not the main drivers behind crime. They overwhelmingly act responsibly with their firearms. Why would you want to burden them with additional paperwork and hassle?
What is the point of this? What problem is it trying to solve? By what mechanism will it solve that problem? What are the costs and benefits of such a policy?
There’s also an issue of throughput (especially in populous counties). Each Sheriff has ~2,000 work hours every year (assuming 40-hour work week and 2 weeks vacation). Let’s suppose each permit interview takes 15 minutes. That means that in any county, the sheriff can only perform 8,000 interviews a year, and that’s assuming they do nothing but permit interviews all (work) day every (work) day.
Utah issues / renews ~30,000 permits every quarter (cite). A good guess is that ~1/4 of those are in Salt Lake County, and ~1/4 in Utah County, with the other half scattered around the other counties in the state. For those two Sheriffs, Jim Winder in Salt Lake County and Jim Tracy in Utah County, they don’t have enough hours in the day to give the all the permit interviews their constituents will be asking for.
We can solve that by streamlining the process. Just one look from the sheriff’s steely ice-blue eyes can pierce through any obfuscatory bullshit directly into the man’s soul, determining his worth to carry a firearm. Within moments, he should be able to cast around a room full of wannabes and pick out the few elite with the cast-iron constitution and honest grit worthy of joining him. They’ll be deputized on the spot and sent out to find others like themselves.
Sounds more like parody than reality. Cartoon level reasoning, and not Miyazaki - more like Looney Tunes.
The very first thought after you conceive of a proposal of this nature is whether or not you would accept the same framework for the other fundamental enumerated constitutional rights.
Here is a perfect example of why your ideas lack any merit. The Sheriff mentioned in the article was a staunch opponent to the “shall issue” laws changing in my state five years ago. Before the changes, my state was a “may issue” state giving all power to the county sheriff to decide who could obtain a carry permit.
This guy rarely gave out permits, not because his county was full of criminals, people who couldn’t pass a class, or who couldn’t find 10 people to vouch for them, or couldn’t provide a valid reason to carry concealed. He denied permits because HE felt that no one besides law enforcement was worthy of that privilege. Since the decision was solely his, there was no recourse. 5 years after our state went to shall issue, we aren’t having "wild west’ shootouts by permitted carriers like this sheriff warned us about. Actually, In Iowa, I am not aware of any concealed carrier who went off on a crime spree, shooting spree, or any other sort of spree since our laws changed.
Instead, this highly trained professional shot himself in the hand.
I have several issues with this proposal. I also don’t really get why this is particularly tied to concealed carry. If this is important for gun safety in general, should it be required to carry at all? I don’t understand why there’s any distinction that we should trust someone enough to carry it in one way and not in the other; if they’re a danger to the community one way, they can do just as much harm the other. The only real difference as I see it is people carrying concealed aren’t going to cause people who might be frightened by the presence of a gun to feel any fear, but chances are if you’re in an area that allows it, you have more guns around you than you even know.
I think this is a good idea. Hell, I’ve often said even people who are generally anti-gun would benefit from gun training. I’m not really sure it should be required. How do you decide what counts as a valid class and what doesn’t? Does it have a particular curriculum? If so, maybe if one was raised with guns, can it be tested out with a written and/or proficiency test?
Why? The whole point of a right is that one doesn’t need to have a reason to exercise it. I know that some places have laws like this, but I really don’t see how it gets past the constitution.
And speaking for myself, and I don’t own a gun, but I’m of the opinion that if I feel I NEED to carry a gun, I need to move or otherwise get myself out of that situation. Like, if I lived in a dangerous neighborhood, I’d find a way out if at all possible before just carrying a gun hoping to counter that danger. Even most people I know who own guns feel that way too. But they still might get stuck in an exceedingly rare shooting or other type of violence where it might be useful.
In many situations, this happens when purchasing a gun, so maybe slightly redundant, but I don’t see a big deal here.
This is overkill. What if I’m new to the area and don’t know enough people willing to do that? What if I’m just generally a private person and don’t have too many close relationships? What if I don’t know someone that is in a prominent position that is willing to vouch for me? This seems to imply I would need to get a psychological evaluation (by requiring a doctor), that could be expensive.
Seriously, for a job they generally only ask for 2-3 references, for a security clearance to handle classified information they don’t ask for that many references. And, frankly, I’m disinclined to give much weight to references because you them have to interview them to get an idea of what their endorsement actually is and how trustworthy they are. And, after all, if one were a criminal intent of subverting the system, it wouldn’t be difficult to find a few people to dupe, who are just oblivious to one’s intentions, or could even be bought off in some sense.
Moreso, that someone is a nice guy says nothing about how safely they can handle a weapon or that the person saying that is meaningfully able to judge character. Hell, look at some of the mass shootings where maybe someone thought something was an issue, but they didn’t say anything, not that anyone intent on that would bother with a conceal carry permit first.
What qualifies as a safe place to store a weapon? Just a gun safe? What if one wants it for home defense so that it’s easily accessible from bed late at night and they have no kids to get at it? What if one has a safe place to store it, by whatever means one specifies, but just does that to get the permit and just doesn’t bother afterward? It’s not unlike enforcing password complexity standards so instead of someone using “password” they use “Password!1” and it doesn’t meaningful make it any more secure.
So, what if that local law enforcement official, with all that experience, can easily tell by shaking someone’s hand and looking him in the eye that he’s worthy of carrying a concealed weapon. It’s just a shame that he knows that all blacks and hispanics are criminals, all people that are vaguely Arab looking are terrorists, and-- well, why would a women want to use a gun?
The problem with this sort of thing is that it subjects the exercise of a constitutionally guaranteed right to the whims of one individual. What happens if he’s prejudiced? What happens if he misjudges someone because his years of experience mislead him? I imagine some cops have pretty good instincts over the years, and some are probably still pretty bad. How do you decide who is qualified to perform this?
Not to mention, this is a huge amount of administration and it’s all just based on your trusting someone’s hunch. This would be cost and time prohibitive in some areas, particularly those that don’t have a whole lot of law enforcement but have a lot of guns, and if you’re going to demand that, you’re going to need to demonstrate the efficacy of this sort of interview to justify it.
Frankly, this seems like a solution in search of a problem. Yes, gun violence is an issue, but before we start cracking down on conceal carry permits, I think we need to see how much of this violence is caused by current conceal carry holders, make a reasoned and evidence based assertion for how much these provisions would reduce that, and then determine whether that increase in cost, administration, time, and infringement of rights is worth the reduction. Statistically, CCW holders are only responsible for a tiny fraction of gun violence and I don’t see how these provisions would meaningfully affect that. I’d much rather be looking at methods to take the weapons out of the hands of gangs, terror threats, and the mentally ill, particularly looking into reducing suicides as they account for roughly 2/3 of gun violence in the US.
Great link, JXJohns. It brings up a question that occurs to me every time I read of someone being killed or injured while “cleaning their gun”. How the hell does that happen? I admit that I have only been shooting regularly for about five years, so I don’t know all of the tricks folks like that sheriff know, but none of the steps I follow to clean a gun can be done with a round in the chamber. My Kahr pistols require pulling the trigger to release the slide from the frame. Did this idiot do that with a round in the chamber? Or is “cleaning my gun” just a euphemism for “mishandling my gun”?
It’s either that yes, the idiot forgot to check the chamber before pulling the trigger to disassemble the gun (and had it pointed at his hand when he pulled the trigger) or he was screwing around with it and shot himself in the hand and then told people he was “cleaning it and it went off” because it sounded better than “i was spinning it around my finger and shot myself” or whatever other dumb thing he was doing with a loaded gun.
This is already the case in all states, except the 6 (I think?) that don’t require a permit.
For self defense. Why else?
See #1, I think they check this. As for why the other 6 don’t, it’s because they decided that you don’t need to and voters agree.
So one has to be religious and/or politically involved to exercise a right? That sounds like a dangerous precedent. Also, why does your narrative only mention 5 people? Do your neighbors also need to know about your other purchases? And IME when you have to provide references for a job application, they don’t require you to sit in front of them while they make calls!
It’s supposed to be on their belt or otherwise on their person most of the time, why would you need to store that particular firearm?
If you carry, please tell me it’s a Diamondback. Or at least a Colt Python.
I think for the most part it is unrealistic and absurd.
Lets see, Harris County Texas has about 3 million people. Do you really think the Sheriff and local police chief’s have the time or inclination to have fireside chats with each applicant?
In Texas you are currently required to have to have a class.
“Why” is subjective. It also opens the door to discrimination.
A background check is currently required in Texas. Also, if a current CHL holder is convicted of a crime that CHL is automatically suspended.
Absurd and unrealistic in my opinion.
Safely store a gun…where? While they are concealed carrying it? As far as storing guns at home, there are already laws stating guns are to be stored in such a manner as to keep them away from children.
There’s a good argument that the second amendment is secondary to the no longer existent institution of the militia. Also, four the nine current Supreme Court justices seem not to think personal gun ownership exists as any kind of right, and couple more don’t seem to be overly upset over gun control measures typically found in liberal-leaning US states. That sounds like a modified limited right to me, not a fundamental one.
Having said that, I am against the OP idea. It is way too legalistic. The idea of getting doctors involved is a particularly bad idea. Around where I live, most physicians are almost as unfriendly to guns as to cigarettes. Putting them in a position where patients are going to pressure them to endorse a public health menace is a terrible idea. They should remain free to speak out against guns, and the OP idea makes that difficult.
The safest thing you can do with your gun is call the police and tell them you want it safely destroyed. Of course, that’s not what concealed carry classes teach, because they are pro-gun private businesses. If you required the class to be taught by a trauma surgeon, or a trauma operating room nurse, accompanied by the parent of a young adult who killed himself with mom’s gun, that would be more like it. But then we are back to the problem of being overly confrontational. The model should be the successful campaigns against cigarettes and unsafe automobiles, not the failed war against drugs.
Every State I know of that has CC requires this… maybe not all states though…
Paperwork to show a person needs to be able to self protect?? What would that be?
Had it already to get gun
So If I am not in a prominent enough position to have people that know me well enough to be able to testify to my character them I’m out… And my Doctor knows me medically… knows nothing of my character, just that I pay in a timely manner/
If I can or cannot safely store the firearm I already posses, in some way affects how I may carry it on my person? Whilst I am carrying it will not be stored anyway.
I firmly feel you are quite mistaken about the average LEO’s ability to determine worthiness by a firm handshake.
As someone who supports more regulation on firearm ownership and carrying, I dislike this proposal. Whatever regulations are put in place should not be weighted in favor of people with lots of business connections or whatever.