Have Your Concealed Handgun Permit Yet?

Contrary to the anti gun claims of "shootouts" at every car accident and a return to the Wild West, the advent of concealed legal handgun carry has come faster than many people thought that it ever would. Being among the first to liberalize handgun laws, the state of Florida opened a veritable floodgate of changes in almost every state's laws to allow concealed carry. Of the 18 million Floridians, over 1 million have concealed carry permits. Permit holders in Florida are the usual law abiding people found in the general population of licensees, and the bane of criminals. God forbid that a thug should be shot while plying his trade. There has been a minuscule amount of revocations in all states, mostly concerning alcohol/driving related crimes. Anti gun groups joyfully point to this minority to show the flaws of legal carry. Yet, they ignore the daily news of people protecting themselves from criminals with handguns they carry legally.

39 states are currently "shall issue" states where government officials are required by state law to issue carry permits to those who have jumped through the legal hoops and background checks to get the permit. 9 states are still "may issue" states, where the state officials have the discretion to issue or not. Most of these officials require a showing of a "need" for a permit. In almost all cases, simple self defense is not a sufficient reason.

The new Orange County, California sheriff has embroiled herself in controversy by revoking many current permit holders when she came into office. These unfortunate people didn't show the "need" for one that she required in her opinion. Politically connected people always had an advantage in getting permits in this type of jurisdiction.

Just Illinois and Wisconsin are the remaining holdouts. The Illinois Sheriff's Association came out in favor of concealed permit issue there. This was the first time they were in favor of concealed permits since the 1920's. It seems like there is a groundswell throughout the state outside of Chicago for loosening of gun carry restrictions.

The Daley political machine, in its infinite wisdom, has denied those in the Windy City the right to self defense. Of course, everyone knows that Chicago is a truly gun free zone, and there are no citizens terrorized by thugs carrying guns as a direct result of the Daley gun philosophy. Wisconsin's governor continues to oppose concealed carry there and a veto is currently a dead end for change.

Gun purchases are still increasing according to the latest FBI figures. The number of people going through a Brady background check hit a high in March this year, and was up by 29.2% over a year ago

Most states have reported huge increases in those applying for permits. Looking at just a few representative states, here's what was found. In Georgia, there were 67,640 applications in 2007, and 121,219 in 2008. That's an increase of 79.2%.

In Michigan, the State reported that in July of last year it had approved 171,586 applications with 6,088 still pending and in March, 2009 had 185,500 applications approved with 10,138 still pending.

Oklahoma officials said that a record 21,000 plus people applied for Oklahoma concealed permits in 2008.

Earlier this year the State of Florida was overwhelmed with a backlog of 95,000 new applications for concealed handgun permits. The State approved spending $3.9 million dollars to hire 61 more temporary workers to process the applications. Hats off again to Obama for creating more jobs.