A recent lawsuit in San Francisco has more than 16,000 Californians waiting with bated breath to see if their requests for a concealed carry permit will be accepted.
Reveal News reported on Tuesday that California has seen a spike in applications for concealed carry permits since the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the state’s “good cause” requirement last year.
But even if the court overturns the decision, chances are few of those applications will be accepted.
California has some of the lowest numbers of people licensed to concealed carry around the country. Only 70,593 people — about .2 percent of California’s population — are permitted to concealed carry, well below the nation’s average.
Florida has the largest population of concealed carry permit holders, 1.27 million or 6.7 percent of the population, as of Jan. 2013.
Several states including Vermont, Arizona, Wyoming, Arkansas, and Alaska do not require a license for residents to concealed carry within their home state.
Most of California’s permit holders live in just seven of 58 counties — Fresno, Kern, Shasta, Sacramento, Tulare, San Bernardino, and Orange counties.
The lack of permit holders is not due to Californians not wanting a concealed carry license. A total of 16,106 permits are pending as of Dec. 31, 2014. That number has increased every year since 2012, Reveal reported.
But California’s application process is both intrusive and tedious, so knowing there is a very small chance their applications would be accepted, few apply. In San Francisco County, each of the 13 applications for concealed carry permits filed last year are still pending.
Some applicants who have applied and are still waiting have legitimate reasons for concerns, including a female pastry chef who feels vulnerable working alone in her business, a Department of Homeland Security employee who applied to carry a gun while on temporary military status, or this man who just wants to one to protect himself.
The court’s decision on this issue could make the process much faster and easier and may flood the firearm market with thousands new concealed carry permit holders.
