Since Tuesday’s shooting spree at the Clackamas Town Center shopping mall (only fifteen miles from here) applications for CCW permits are up by more than 300% my local sheriff’s department . . .
My job–the one I get (cough cough) paid for–has taken me inside the Sheriff’s office/jail once or twice a week for more than eight years, and I often see one or two people at the CCW desk, filling out their applications or getting fingerprinted for their background checks. Few law-abiding citizens are deterred by either the $52.50 fee or the 2-3 week turnaround time for approved permits to be mailed out.
There’s usually some business at the CCW counter, but I’ve never seen almost a dozen people lined up out the door, waiting for the piece of paper that allows them to (legally) effectively protect themselves. Sheriff’s department sources tell me this has been happening all week, starting after Tuesday’s mall shooting.
An official told me that a normal day will see ten to fifteen CCW applications or renewals, and a busy day might see twenty. This Wednesday the department received fifty-five applications, and yesterday’s traffic had already passed that mark by mid-afternoon. Instead of two to three customers per hour, they’re filling the lobby and lining up out the door.
Many in Congress would like to pretend that this isn’t happening, and will hope that ‘reasonable gun control’ (read: gradual but complete disarmament) can finally be rammed down the people’s throats in the wake of the Clackamas and Newtown, CT tragedies. I hope that some will pay attention to how people are really coming to grips with these situations: by taking steps never to be helplessly shot down themselves.
God Bless America.
This is gonna sound weird, but reading this brought tears to my eyes. I’m pretty tired, and not thinking clearly right now, but my thought process was something like “people who have finally decided that they’ve had enough of this shit.”
Would be nice to see some demographic variety in that line, but I don’t know what the demo of that surrounding area is, so it may simply be representative.
that didn’t sound weird. the way i read it was there are still quite a few good people in this country.
You’re not going to see much demographic variety in lines like this. The election bears out a much larger trend: The only people who believe that they should fend for themselves any more in any significant number are white males.
The country was founded by white and overwhelmingly protestant males, and the ideas of limited government and self-provision on which this country was based came from the Protestant Reformation and the Scottish Enlightenment.
Those ideas didn’t originate from a multicultural morass of crypto-socialist thinking that is now the stock and trade of young females, “diversity-uber-alles” minorities and people who think with their reproductive organs. These non-white-male electoral cohorts will call for the restriction or outright banning of guns, because they believe that it is the government’s job to provide protection, income, jobs and medical care.
It’s a fairly representative sample. This isn’t a very diverse county.
Those sound like Washington CPL numbers, Chris. Where are you again?
Well that is a picture of the Clark county sheriff’s office. The few times I have gone in for permits or renewals I have noticed allot of women. Go Clark county!
Chris, great reporting. Much appreciated. It will be interesting if, after the mass shootings news overload coverage goes away, sometime next week or month it gets reported that CC permit requests nationwide have gone ballistic.
I just called the Portland Expo Center (which borders Clackamas) and the event manager stated that they are having a very busy gun show today as in attendance is high.
Thank you Chris for the report.
Simply put what should have never happened there did. It is human nature to go through your day in a nice little bubble that says, no one will ever want to harm me in any way. It is the only way you or I or anyone could actually get out of bed in the morning and be productive. Unfortunately it takes a tragic event such as this to shake people loose of the bubble if only for a moment. This does not mean they are all paranoid, but what it does mean is they like you or I know we need a backup plan in case the unthinkable happens. Like Charles Barkley said, I am at peace knowing I have it with me. It doesn’t mean he is paranoid, but in case the extreme and unthinkable happens he has a plan.
Excellent! That’s some change I can believe in.
Here’s hoping folks get training along with these permits and don’t just say, “I got my CCW. I’m all good”. I’d much rather read more about DGUTD’s than IGOTD’s.
Oregon requires training to get a permit so those people have it.
They don’t require “training”, they require a class. It’s not training at all. That’s up to the individual.
Has anyone heard about the CCW holder at the Clackamas Shopping mall that confronted the shooter last week?:
http://www.nwcn.com/news/oregon/183609901.html
This is first I’ve heard of it.
Nope, news to me.
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2012/12/daniel-zimmerman/clackamas-shooter-confronted-by-ccw-holder/
My bad – should have gone back a couple of pages
Sokay, there’s been a lot of traffic here lately. I just found a post that even I missed, and you’ll see my name in almost every thread.
I know this is an old p0st, but I have some relevant updated info.
Today I went to get my CCW renewed in Gwinnett County, Georgia. I had to wait in a pretty long line. The clerks were showing some exasperation over the number of people they were handling, so when I got to the window I asked the clerk about it.
She said that they normally process 30-40 applications per day, but for the past two weeks they’ve been getting 100-150 applications per day.
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