When elected Sacramento County sheriff in 2011, Scott Jones had one campaign pledge he intended to keep—to make sure every law-abiding citizen received a concealed handgun permit if filed. And over the past five years, the number of permits has risen from 350 to almost 8,000—placing his county behind only Fresno and Orange for the number of concealed-carry permits in the state.
However, that doesn’t sit well with some in the media. In a recent Sacramento Bee op-ed, the newspaper’s editorial board whined about tax money funding part of the permit process, before finally getting to what they really wanted to say: “We do not feel safer now that one in every 135 Sacramento County residents has a concealed-carry permit. And we certainly don’t believe taxpayers should pay for the gun owners’ privilege.”
For his part, Sheriff Jones doesn’t really seem to care what the editorial board thinks. Jones recently told the board in an email that issuing permits “is not a business enterprise,” and that when the department tried to make the operation cost-neutral, the “delays and backup were untenable.”
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