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By James England via concealednation.org

Despite cities like Seattle pushing for increased measures intended to raise the cost of gun ownership, the city of Spokane has another issue — too many concealed carry applicants. Normally, the Spokane County Public Safety Building is open from Tuesday to Friday, 8 am to 3:05 pm to process concealed carry applications but just yesterday, county officials were forced to turn away applicants as early as 12:30 pm due to the increased volume . . .

According to KHQ-6, there were 941 new concealed carry applications filed in Spokane last month. Yesterday, officials realized early on that their forensics division wouldn’t have time to complete applications for any more applicants and began having deputies advise citizens to return the next day.

Wow.

President Obama has recently issued several imperial mandates intended to increase the scrutiny placed upon law-abiding gun owners and gun vendors. Whether or not the sudden rush of new concealed carry applicants is related to those decrees remains to be seen. What is known is that — particularly in Washington state — there has been a concerted effort by the anti-gun movement to introduce restrictive legislation and use back door approaches to make gun ownership by law-abiding citizens more difficult.

Seattle, for instance, is instituting a new “gun violence tax” that would make firearm dealers pay a set amount for every firearm sold and another tax on ammunition. According to the Seattle City Council’s Budget Office, this new “gun violence tax” will raise between $300,000 and $500,000 a year. In reality, it’s forced local gun shops to relocate outside the city limits in a bid to avoid a punishing tax that would both increase overall costs to the customers and place an undue competitive burden on gun dealers.

Along the same lines, Virginia’s Attorney General recently moved to sever concealed carry reciprocity with a majority of other states. Just when you think the fight is over, folks, it seems to heat up more.

2015 saw the introduction of a lot of great legislation intended to expand gun rights and offer more law-abiding citizens the opportunity to own and carry a concealed handgun. Now the forces of civilian disarmament seem to be using back. The people of Spokane seem to have spoken: the right to keep and bear arms — including carrying a firearm —  is an American right guaranteed to all law-abiding and eligible citizens under the Second Amendment.

Unfortunately, some those fine folks will have to return another day to wait in line for their chance.

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45 COMMENTS

    • BINGO! I smell a lawsuit.
      Law abiding citizens forced to jump through hoops to exercise a right. Sounds like they better expand their hours, or face court time to me.

      • A single day of more people than you can help, is not the definition of tyranny or even inappropriate.

        The sheriffs offices and police stations simply cant be expected to be so overstaffed that no one ever has to wait.

        That’s the whole point of the article, that it’s a greater than normal amount of applicants.

        We have plenty of other tyrannical and fascist stuff to worry about.

        • Uhhhh… No. We don’t have a better fight. Washington is shall issue. If Washington residents let this stand they can just use buerocratical tyranny everywhere to delay your rights forever and say funding or manpower like ATF wants to.

        • Jeremy B.

          There are two fundamental problems. One, that government will punish us for exercising our unalienable right to defend ourselves … unless we first pay a tax and acquire a license. Two, that government “limitations”, which can be “inadvertent” or intentional, present an undefined and potentially unlimited barrier to acquiring a license for a right.

          Take background checks for instance. Suppose government law requires a background check before EVERY acquisition (whether in person or at a dealer). All you have to do to effectively halt firearms transfers is to woefully understaff the background check system. Quite literally have one employee answer a single phone for just four hours a day (Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to noon no less) … and make their computer access the records database over a dial-up Internet connection. They would be doing great if they could process about 10 background checks per hour, which is 40 background checks per day … out of how many thousands per day in your state or nationally?

          And before you poo-poo this, just answer a simple question. What stops the federal government from understaffing the phones at the NICS call center? Answer: absolutely nothing.

          This is why government should not require licenses before exercising any rights, much less fundamental and Constitutionally enumerated rights. There is too much room for ineptitude and abuse.

        • Uncommon_sense.

          I appreciate your fervor but there already exists a safeguard against ineptitude on the part of the NICS.

          Federal law madates that checks not returned in 72hr are automatically deemed as passing.

          I do however agree with your larger point.

        • Unbelievable. We could spend our time on
          – repeal of I594
          – court challenge of Seattle ammo tax
          – promoting constitutional carry
          – promoting universal reciprocity
          – removing silencers from the NFA
          Etc

          And you guys want to sue a police department because they werent ready for an unexpected doubling of applicants.

        • “Federal law madates that checks not returned in 72hr are automatically deemed as passing.”

          Sorry, Andrew, but that is not accurate. If NICS comes back as Delay, then the FBI has 72 to research further until they can come back with a definitive Proceed or Deny. If they cannot do either within 72 hours, the the Brady law has no power to forbid the transaction. That’s NOT the same thing as “automatically deemed as passing.” Why not?

          1. The FBI can continue to research and if they later turn up a disqualifying element, then they can still come back with a Deny down the road. Then the state comes after you for being a prohibited possessor.

          2. Even though the NICS delay expired after 72 hours, that just relates to federal minimum standards. Some states have their own additional standards and still do not allow a sale to proceed based only on an expired Delay. Several states mandate their own background check, in addition to NICS, against their own state data base. That can take longer than just the federal 72 hours limit.

          3. Regardless of NICS, some states flat out impose a waiting period beyond 72 hours, even with a NICS Proceed.

          4. Individual retailers, like Cabela’s, by corporate policy, will still not transfer based on an expired Delay, only with an actual Proceed.

          So just because NICS came back Delay and the 72 hours eventually passed, it doesn’t guarantee that you’re automatically getting your gun or keeping your gun. That’s just one of many hurdles.

    • Agreed. Watch yourself, Washington (state and D.C., for that matter)….

      “The sword comes to the world for the procrastination of justice…”
      Mishnah, Pirkei Avot 5:8

  2. Glad to hear about this “problem”.

    The more decent people who carry, the better off we all are.

  3. I live in Spokane. They usually have only a few people processing applications at any one time. What would help the process immensely is if everyone would download the CWP application online and fill it out PRIOR to going down there, as opposed to folks showing up unprepared, waiting in line just to get the application, then trying to fill it out there. It’s a poor system they have and the area this is done at is a small congested hallway. A larger area would be nice, but that costs money.
    They also have to be fingerprinted at the same time. This isn’t a long process, but the area is small and there is no room and so the line gets long.

  4. This is why the .gov doesn’t want constitutional carry. All those folks lining up have to pay fees. And that means funds into the .govs coffers.

    If CA was smart they’d become a shall issue state across the board and charge appropriate fees for the “right”.

    • Cali and smart don’t really go together.

      I, personally, know two anti-gun couples who just moved to Cali from Texas (non-native Texans.)

      Sorry to tell you, I think they’ll fit in there better than they did here. More anti-libs heading y’all’s way.

    • The list of weapon owners is more valuable to the government than license fees. They have to know who owns guns before they can confiscate guns.

      • They already know who we are. Anybody that believes there’s not a gun owners list already isn’t paying attention. What saves us is that we are a legion and growing daily.

        thanks to barry and kapo bloomberg we’re better armed and more numerous than at any time in our history.

      • Fred,

        JWM’s response was spot on. Don’t think for a moment that Big Brother doesn’t have almost real-time updates from credit card processors and the big Internet Search Engines. (Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are no friends of the Second Amendment.)

        If you used a credit card to order anything from a vendor who sells firearms, firearms parts, and/or ammunition, you are on Big Brother’s list. If you used a search engine to repeatedly research a particular firearm, component, or ammunition, you are on Big Brother’s list.

        Big Brother may not know the exact model/serial number of what you own … they will know that you own something.

        I suppose you might not be on Big Brother’s list if you have always purchased everything with cash from private sellers. I cannot imagine that very many of us fit that description. As JWM stated, our security at this point lies NOT in any deficiencies in Big Brother’s list — our security lies in our sheer numbers. And from that perspective, the more firearms and ammunition we own, and the more firearms owners there are, the more daunting and impossible any endeavor to disarm us becomes.

  5. An NRA email brought to my attention this online petition being sent to Washington voters by Governor Inslee. It includes gems like this :

    “But make no mistake, the NRA and their friends in the gun lobby are a powerful and destructive force. We must stand together to demand a reduction in preventable gun violence here in Washington state. We don’t have a minute to waste.”

    If you click the link to the petition he wants you to sign, it goes straight to his reelection campaign webpage. An interesting strategy, trying to get reelected by calling thousands and thousands of fellow Washingtonians a “destructive force. ”

    A cynical person might think he is simply trying to get gullible people on his fundraising mailing list. Seems to be the Democrat playbook this year, gun control has become the new rallying cry to get people to open their check books and the NRA is this year’s Evil Empire. And apparently I’m a destructive force. Who knew?

    • Gov. Inslee has a HUGE obstacle in front of him, namely Washington State’s Constitution which explicitly gives a WA citizen the right too own firearms for self-defense. This is one reason WA is a shall issue state.

      • I think we were one of the FIRST shall issues states because of the state constitution. As for making 300 to 500k a year for Seattle? Yea right.. Not gonna happen.

  6. Just wait. President Trump will sign into law a requirement that all states give full faith and credit to carry licenses issued by other states or lose federal funding…

    A man can dream.

  8. I misplaced my now 2 year old CPL (Washington State’s CCW) at the VA. I was hoping
    to be able to get a copy re-printed for a small fee, as it doesn’t expire for another 2 years.

    Attempts to get one on-line were refused, so a quick trip down to the courthouse at lunch
    seemed a likely route. The lines are long, and the system very slow.

    Not fun, under the circumstances, to be part of a story garnering national attention now.

    Open carry is legal here, but who wants to have some moonbat break out a whistle and
    call for the police when they see it?

    The divide deepens…

    • “Open carry is legal here, but who wants to have some moonbat break out a whistle and
      call for the police when they see it? “

      Does it happen, though?

      I OC some here, and see people OC-ing all the time. No biggie. And, that seems to be the case throughout most of the country.

      Is it really a problem there, or just an irrationally feared one?

    • I feel for you. I washed mine, which was the old style, went down to the PSB, walked right up, chatted with the ladies there while they laughed at me for washing my permit like only a guy would do, walked out with a new permit of the new style a few minutes later. My experience has always been positive there.
      A friend went down for his permit though and the line was out the door.

    • I understand it’s anecdotal, and I don’t know what part of WA your in, but when I moved here I had to wait 90 days to establish residency I open carried every day in lakewood/lacey/olympia and yes even Seattle without so much as a second glance and zero police interactions. The gen pop only cares/notices what is in front of them.

  11. I’m applying for a Virginia oos permit next week because I do business there. Their incompetent AG thinks Florida doesn’t have stringent requirements for permits. It’s tougher than his state but he was opulent know that.

  12. Answer is simple … move to Kansas where carry conceal without a permit is legal. KS is the #1 state for gun freedom.

  13. Whew! Seven hours (and five minutes!) a day, four days a week! If those Spokane county bureaucrats worked any harder, they might accidentally get something done.

    • Actually, the permits are issued through the records division which is run by the city, not the county.
      Can’t blame the county on this one.

      • You can apply for a CPL from either the city or the county in Washington.

        My WA CPL was issued by the country sheriff.

        • It depends on what agency is issuing them in any specific location. For the Spokane area, it’s the city of Spokane, not Spokane County which was specifically mentioned in the comment I replied to.
          You may have had your permit issued by a sheriffs dept, but not in Spokane County or the Spokane County Sheriffs dept. The discussion is about permits in SPOKANE. All of Spokane County permits are issued through the records division which is administered by the city of Spokane Police Dept.

      • I apologize unreservedly. It’s apparently the Spokane city bureaucrats who are barely half-assing their jobs.

  14. One thing I find interesting is that nowhere is it mentioned that by law the Spokane Police must accept concealed carry permits during all regular business hours. It’s the same thing with many of the departments going to ‘Appointment Only’ applications that you have to schedule weeks in advance now.

    RCW 9.41.070 specifically states:
    “The issuing authority shall not refuse to accept completed applications for concealed pistol licenses during regular business hours.”

    Of course, when has government ever had to follow the law?

    • I asked them that one time. Regular business hours as SET by that agency. One would think regular hours would mean M-F 9-5.
      They (records division) believe the RCW means they must take a complete applications during THEIR normal hours…whatever they may be.

      I also believe that specific paragraph in the RCW is to curtail any possible discrimination.

    • Ha! I went to the police office in a certain small college town (crawling with lib/prog SJW types, of course, the only blue dot in a great big red electoral map) here in Washington SIX times, only to be turned away every time.

      Staffing issues, they said. Different days of the week, different times of day, and I even called right before two attempts. (Lady on phone: Yes, come on in. Lady at desk: No, there’s nobody here to do that.) Staffing problems, my ass. They just didn’t want to do it.

      After two months of unsuccessful attempts, I decided to do an end-around. So I took an afternoon off work, drove out to the county sheriff’s office, and was in and out like a flash. Thank your deity for independently elected sheriffs.

      Government offices have ways of getting out of doing things they don’t want to do.

  16. Here in Ohio, my Sheriff’s office makes you call and make an appointment. It makes things a little more manageable.

  17. What about having more cops put down their donuts and help out in the office, in order to serve the public that is paying them?

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