We recently reported on a New Jersey resident who spent three years fighting for his concealed carry permit — a prima facie unconstitutional barrier to his gun rights. Meanwhile, Bee Hive State residents are applying for their equally unconstitutional carry permits in droves, despite issues with Utah’s fingerprinting system.
From standard.net:
A crackdown on illegible fingerprints has failed to slow sustained increases in the number of concealed-carry firearm permits being granted in Utah.
The state counted 662,720 valid concealed-carry permits as of June 30, the end of the most recent fiscal year, data from the Bureau of Criminal Identification shows. That’s an increase of 8.3 percent over the previous year, and 74.3 percent over five years ago . . .
Chapman said the biggest change in concealed-carry permitting over time has been the number of applicants per year. “Back in 2008 and 2009, we had about 44,000 applications,” he said. “Now we get double, sometimes triple that.”
Needless to say any mainstream media outlet worth its civilian disarmament salt (i.e. all of them) has to throw some cold water on what is, without doubt, good news for American gun rights.
Robert Wadman, of Eden, an emeritus professor of criminal justice at Weber State University, said it’s easy to explain the popularity of concealed-carry permits.
“There is a high amount of fear,” he said. “In this environment right now, with multiple shootings and terrorism and increased media attention, it increases the level of fear in the hearts of a lot of people, and so it helps the gun companies sell more guns.”
Each year in Utah, thousands of concealed-carry permit applications are denied, or existing permits are suspended or revoked when background checks are made.
Yes, well, trblive.com reports that, “Nationally the number of concealed carry permits has increased from 240,000 issued a year between 1999 and 2007 to 1.7 million this year.”
Once again, I’d like to point out that there are two Americas: small government states and statist states. How that resolves itself — if it ever does — remains the important question for liberty-loving Americans. Watch this space and keep your powder dry.