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Draft bill: Give secretary of state the power to hand out carry-concealed permits
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You know that Senate Republicans are contemplating big changes in state gun laws, which include expanding the list of places where holders of concealed weapons permits could carry heat.
But apparently state lawmakers are also contemplating a major shift in who issues these permits. Someone, according to a draft bill floating through the Capitol, wants to take that power out of the hands of the dozens and dozens of probate judges across the state, and give it to Secretary of State Karen Handel.
Gun enthusiasts have been critical of probate judges, who can sometimes take weeks or months to issue carry-concealed permits. Under this draft, the secretary of state would issue those five-year licenses, and would be required to make a decision within five working days.
Applicants would still have to be 21, with no felony record, and would have to submit to fingerprinting. The legislation would permit Handel to hand over many of the chores to a private contractor.
One thought: Right now, because they’re distributed out of 159 county offices, it’s been hard to say how many concealed weapons permits have been issued in Georgia. Centralization would at least let us count them.



DEL.ICIO.US

Comments
By mountain mom
October 8, 2008 10:29 AM | Link to this
Some probate judges have been rather vocal about contesting politicians’ claims that permitted gun owners are “the most law-abiding citizens we have”, since they have a good idea of who/what goes through their office and can give an honest reponse to what is otherwise hidden from public view. I guess that’s what happens when you speak truth to power….
By Will Jones
October 8, 2008 11:33 AM | Link to this
It is particularly egregious to “contract out” governance of the Bill of Rights’ protection afforded the People under the Second Amendment.
Privatization of government services, rather than calling on the noble patriotic spirit of citizens willing to act as public servants, or chartered as “corporations” for a genuine “public purpose” on behalf of, and demonstrably subservient to, the People, is a subversion of the Constitution and the ideals of Our Creed.
We have been moved by increment and wholesale from the Individual Sovereignty which defined American Exceptionalism until the end of WWII and are now confronted by a fiscal and monetary crisis the root of which can only be found in the machinations of a false elite antagonistic to the individual freedom which defined this liberal experiment: the Land of Promise.
Having a GOP hack installed into our Secretary of State’s office by the same corrupt faction which installed the draft-dodging, 9-11-committing closet-queen in the White House, determine who should have a carry permit or not, is a reprehensible move away from the “fragmented republics” envisioned by Our Founder as a protection across the land from the rise of pseudo-aristoi in some backwater usurping the rights of the People.
This is the same woman who, a year ago, stated categorically her inability to implement a paper trail for voting next month to ensure election integrity, and was cited in a news report yesterday in the AJC for possibly “hiding” upwards of a million and a half newly registered “tidal wave” of voters in Georgia.
From Diebold’s proven fraud to Handel’s “inability” to implement a paper trail from election integrity, to her potentially under reporting this timely phenome of new voters wishing to remove the patently obvious corrupt regime, she serves, from power, we must recognize that a series of bumbling, good-hearted “errors” is not what brought us to the crisis and choices we now face as a state and nation.
The Whigs who founded America managed to convince their neighbors of the evil being consciously perpetrated against them and their society by those loyal to king and pope.
McCain and Palin represent Tory treason no less clearly and must be addressed by the mass of us the same way Our Founders did the Tory menance in 1776.
They will not go away gently. It is on our blood upon which their perverse appetites feed. It is their blood which must be checked. Who has a greater will for the fight: government sinecures, childless, empty, serving “caesar” and the killers of John and Martin, or the united People of America, wishing only for freedom and justice in Truth, raising families, doing honest work, and being good neighbors?
The false princes and ravening wolves are at our door in service to the identified Anti-Christ. Only We, the People, under the Creed and Constitution can cast them into the Pit. Obama is only a small step in the right direction and on November 5, should the sectarian faction now fraudulently in power attempt to reverse again the express Will of the People, full rectification must be effected by “any means necessary.”
Jeffersonian Exegesis
By John
October 8, 2008 12:07 PM | Link to this
One more thing for the most political Secretary of State in our state’s history to politicize.
By Ty
October 8, 2008 3:13 PM | Link to this
I hope the FBI checks out this so called Jeffersonian Exegesis. Sounds like you just committed a crime against the United States of America buddy.
By Jethro
October 8, 2008 8:17 PM | Link to this
John, Karen Handel is not political in how she handles matters. She will show all that she is not political when she handles this complaint against [Republican PSC Commissioner Doug Everett] (http://www.ajc.com/business/content/metro/stories/2008/10/08/psc_candidate.html) the same way she “handeled” the complaint against Democratic PSC candidate Jim Powell.
By zeke
October 8, 2008 10:26 PM | Link to this
I cannot believe the Georgia Legislature left this up to judges! In South Carolina, a person must have taken prescribed training, be finger printed, submit pictures and apply to the State Law Enforcement Division(SLED) for a permit! SLED then checks out the background in their records and the FBI database! If they cannot find a reason to deny the permit in 60 days, they are under a MUST ISSUE order from the legislature! Works pretty good!
By Will Jones
October 8, 2008 11:23 PM | Link to this
By Ty
October 8, 2008 3:13 PM | Link to this
I hope the FBI checks out this so called Jeffersonian Exegesis. Sounds like you just committed a crime against the United States of America buddy.
…or that you just exposed yourself as a fascist Enemy of the People in support of proven Treason and Misprision of Treason.
There is a clear, bright divide between right and wrong in America today.
McCain/Palin: serial adulterer, Married to the Mob, racist, liar, understandably full of cancer; and his “Barbie” runningmate, inbred whitetrash, false prophet, lying hypocrite stamped with the Devil’s Mark;
or,
Obama/Biden: embodiment of humility and grace fulfilling the “”E Pluribus Unum” aspect of America’s Creed, enunciating the “Song of America” perfectly; with a sturdy, thoughtful, candid representative of what a patriotic American can be while retaining the sectarian tradition associated with that which Our Founder knew to be “the real Anti-Christ,” brought to our shores by so many, whose redeemed blood has since been poured into efforts to secure this New Secular Order against the forces of caesaropapism around the world.
From a family which supplied the blood to win America’s War for Independence, originally, and to secure it since, I have received FBI “Top Secret” clearance for my efforts in the Army twice, appropriately, and look forward to passing the test for any inquiry into the charges made and proven against the Anti-Christ’s known agents of Rome’s Fifth Column who provably committed 9/11, after unconstitutionally cheating into the White House the homosexual draft-dodgers whose minions, like “Ty,” resent the Light of Truth, to send us to false war shedding innocent blood, based on lies of WMD, for heroin, oil, Rockefeller/Bush’s Saudis, and a corrupt faction of false Jews in the State of Israel who actually believed helping Bush/Cheney commit 9/11 killing 3,000 innocents was somehow righteous…or that “Annuit Coeptis” could still obtain before a “blind” Almighty.
This is not an academic distinction. Many millions of Americans have taken The Oath placing their very lives at sacrifice for the Constitution and Our Creed on behalf of the Sovereign People. We must now sound the clarion call for all of us to renew our vow and recognize the conscious, organized evil perpetrated against Our Armed Forces, Treasury, borders, and Constitution, by a know sectarian faction of closet-queen draft-dodgers serving the Roman Rockefeller/Bush Big Oil/Fed Fifth Column.
That historic force, promoting false money, illegal immigration, false war, assassination of our leaders, and subversion of the Constitution, must now be arrested or The People’s Covenant, established by Our Founders, may be lost, and American “Exceptionalism” disappear that we be one more failed experiment in G-d’s efforts to lift humanity away from the despotism which has been the norm in all human history up to 1776.
“Ty’s” objections are duly noted…his antipathy to Our Creed, and fealty to Satan, witting or unwitting, fully understood.
Death for Treason
By Charles
October 9, 2008 9:09 AM | Link to this
I have had a gun permit for many years. It does take a while to get one but that is not the fault of local officials. Background checks by state and federal law enforcement agencies take a while. It is worth the wait. Republicans are just playing to our emotions again.
By curtis41
October 9, 2008 1:21 PM | Link to this
I can speak from experience that some probate judges and even Sheriffs drag their feet and try to discourage concealed carry in Georgia. They even give confusing and contradictory information and instructions to applicants concerning a modified open carry and require social security numbers, both illegal as done in these counties. A Georgia Firearms License permits not only concealed carry, but OPEN carry as well. The very reason these firearm laws are preempted by the Georgia Legislature is to keep from having a patchwork of inconsistent and conflicting ordinances on firearms across the state. 48 states have firearm carry laws and in the shall-issue states, violent crimes are overall DOWN, despite what all the Chicken Littles tell you. GFL holders are vetted by the FBI, state and local law enforcement and have an extremely low incidence of firearm crimes, MUCH lower than the general population. Too many politicians have substituted their own preferences and “emergency regulations” in place of state law and the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, thus denying citizens their 2nd amendment rights and the natural right to self-defense in their own home. That needs to STOP. GFL licensee, member of the NRA, SAF and GCO.
By Will Jones
October 9, 2008 2:04 PM | Link to this
Remove local public officials who play around with the Bill of Rights by organizing your neighbors and removing the state and federal “farm team” “good buddies” of the Bush/Cheney treason and fascist bailout by voting for Martin and Obama, and congressional candidates who support them; or, move to Metro Atlanta, a “blue oasis” leading Georgia out of Babylon.
Jefferson, Our Founder, envisioned fragmented republics: each municipality, county and jurisdiction upholding the ideals and principles of our Whig Founding: Individual Sovereignty.
Local checks on erosions of rights by those closest to officials and politicians, and our ability to “vote with our feet” are the best guarantees against the “neo-con” caesarism now seen in the treasonous faction willing to support those who blatantly committed 9/11 to send our best to die in false war shedding innocent blood for heroin and oil.
Centralizing issuance of carry permits in Georgia, implemented by those so comfortable with the draft-dodging closet-queens now in power obviously serving the Roman Anti-Christ, cannot be a good thing.
America is about full distribution of power throughout the individuals comprising the sovereign People. It is we who must control those we make elect to govern. Closer to the People is better. Centralization/federalism is rife with tendencies against individual freedom and rights…as evidenced by the status quo.
We, the People, are sovereign. Contracting out administration of our rights to private business, as is being suggested, is insanity. Those whose proposals in government are manifestly “insane” should not be granted the public’s trust.
Martin/Obama is only a start in the right direction. There is much work to be done resurrecting righteous America.