I’ve been watching a lot of ‘Rockford Files’ reruns on WGN (I heart TiVo) - A great show, and it really doesn’t seem dated (aside from the clothes). One thing I don’t understand, though, is why Rockford doesn’t just apply for a permit to carry his gun?
–I know he’s an ex-con, but since he rec’d a full pardon, wouldn’t he be eligible?
–He was able to get a private investigator license, wouldn’t that be at least as difficult to get as a license to carry a weapon?
–Going along with the PI license, wouldn’t there be some assumption that you would, probably, carry a gun in your day-to-day work (heck, even if 99% (a figure pulled out of thin air) of private investigation deals with research for divorce cases, there is still some danger)?
I’m not asking why he doesn’t carry a gun all the time, I know the answer to that (“If I carried a gun, I might have to shoot someone”). I’m just wondering why, for those times he took the gun out of the cookie jar, he didn’t get the license. It would have saved him at least three arrests this week alone!
It’s been a while, but I was under the impression that he would be hasseled by the PI/Con hating cops despite having a pardon.
WGN? I’ll check it out. Thanks!
My memories are vague (on nearly everything these days) but I also thought his reasoning was something like – when you shoot at people, they tend to shoot back or words to that effect.
Were concealed carry permits actually around in his state back then? A lot of states with concealed carry permits, that’s a new thing that wasn’t around several years ago.
California law, then and now, leave the issuance of a CCW to the individual sheriff of the residents county. Jim Rockford lived in LA or Ventura County (I forget which). No permit for you, Mr. Ex-Con! You don’t have the “need.”
It wouldn’t fit with his mindset anyways. Jim Rockford was more likely to ask around, sneak around, and then talk his way out of trouble than shoot a round. A gun makes you (the fictional PI) less cautious, more prone to making a cocky mistake. While JR may have seemed cocky at times, he was careful not to put himself or others in harm’s way if he could help it.
