Arbitrary Nature of California’s Policy on Who Can “Carry A Concealed Weapon” Exposed by Former Sacramento Sheriff Providing Gun

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Bill Cavala
A veteran of over 30 years in Sacramento

Former Sacramento Sheriff Lou Blanas is under investigation for providing a permit to carry a loaded, concealed weapon in public to a friend and business associate. The previous Sheriff, Glenn Craig, had established a three person Committee to review the rationale provided by applicants – and to establish conditions if a permit was recommended (safety classes, proficiency tests, etc.) Blanas bypassed this procedure and simply awarded his friend a short-term permit.

These series of events put California’s CCW law (“Carry Concealed Weapon”) into relief once again. The law says only that CCW’permits may be granted by Sheriffs or Chiefs of Police “for good cause, to persons of good moral character”.

Come again? “Good Cause”? “Good moral character”?

Back in the early 1980’s a young lawyer friend of then Assemblyman Steve Peace; Irwin Nowick got a job at the Assembly Office of Research. He used the public records act to obtain a list of permit holders from each of California’s 50 Elected Sheriffs. (Police Chiefs, who worked for Cities, typically passed the responsibility on to the Sheriff because City Managers didn’t want to deal with the liability issues).

The policies revealed by the permitting was laid out in a simple report – the brunt of which was that CCW issuance was arbitrary, capricious, and violated the most basic equal protection notions.

The Sheriff of Los Angeles issued 3 permits for the jurisdiction’s millions of residents. The Sheriff of San Francisco issued 12 permits for its three quarters of a million residents. (One to Diane Feinstein, the object of a failed NRA recall after she supported outlawing all firearms in private hands).

In rural Kern County, over 19,000 permits had been issued. Remarkable correlations between permits issued and contributions to the Sheriff were noticed.

A permit issued in Kern County had to be honored in Los Angeles too. Unable to obtain a permit from their local issuing agency, permit seekers often found succor in distant counties.