Gunning for approval: As Sacramento sheriff eases application process for concealed firearms, state lawmaker looks to audit practice

The internet is making it easier to legally carry a concealed firearm—sort of.

Since November 1, 2016, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department has been using an online system to consider applications for permits to carry concealed weapons, what are known as CCWs.

Tested for a month prior to its official adoption, the new PermitDirector system operates through a deal with Permitium LLC, which the county board of supervisors retroactively approved funding for earlier this month. PermitDirector is paid for through October 31, 2019, and the contract can be extended another two years. The system has been touted as a way to cut down on paperwork and speed up the application process. But will it affect public safety?

According to Sgt. Tony Turnbull, spokesman for the sheriff’s department, the answer is a resounding no. Turnbull explained via email that the actual requirements for obtaining a CCW haven’t changed, just the way for county residents to log those requests.

“The online system is not to mean that the process is somehow automated, or that we don’t have an interview and thorough background check,” Turnbull wrote. “The background checks, interview and document reviews are all the same as they were before going to an internet based application system.”

Some have questioned just how thorough those background checks really are, as the agency has issued CCWs at a torrid pace ever since Sheriff Scott Jones took office in 2010.

According to Turnbull, between 2011 and 2016, Jones’ department has issued approximately 8,493 CCW permits to county residents. Turnbull also confirmed that, as of December 2016, Jones had revoked 236 of those permits.

Stanford Law School Professor John Donohue has documented his criticisms of the sheriff’s department’s lenient approach to dispensing CCW permits on his own blog and in the op-ed section of The Sacramento Bee. Much of that criticism has been aimed directly at Jones, whose stated views that more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens make the public safer Donohue disagrees with.

“Scott Jones was very enthusiastic about right to carry and was sort of handing the permits out like candy,” Donohue told SN&R. “He sort of subscribed to this … view that good things will happen if you hand out these permits, but he was not always honest about it.”

Donohue referenced a speech Jones gave in 2013 telling audience members that no one had ever “been shot by a holder of a concealed weapons permit issued by this office.”

This was untrue. According to Donohue, and confirmed by court documents, in October 2012, Jones signed a letter revoking a CCW permit his agency granted to Hun Chu Saelee after Saelee shot a college student in the head at a Halloween party months before Jones’ claim.

Further scrutiny of the sheriff’s CCW process will come through a state audit requested by Assemblyman Kevin McCarty. The Sacramento Democrat’s request was approved March 30 by the California Joint Legislative Audit Committee. The audit will “evaluate the negative fiscal impacts and public safety questions raised by CCW license programs in the state,” according to a news release from McCarty’s office.

Specifically, the independent state auditor will investigate the CCW practices of Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego counties, assessing how many permits are issued, renewed and revoked annually; compliance with existing laws; factors used to determine who should receive a permit; and the fiscal impacts.

“The dramatic increase of CCW licenses in Sacramento County alone is alarming and presents a number of important fiscal and public safety questions that I am confident the State Auditor will be able to answer,” McCarty said in the release.

The agenda request from Jones’ department listed an “increased demand for CCW permits” as one of the reasons for adopting the online PermitDirector system.

Turnbull explained that this increased demand owed to the need for existing applicants to renew their CCW permits every two years.

When asked what reason individuals might have for requesting concealed-carry permits, Turnbull said that “each individual has their own reason.” He added that the CCW application appointment line is “always full.”