The long waits for concealed carry licenses are getting shorter

The obscenely long wait to obtain a concealed carry license that many gun owners have faced over the past two years appears to be easing in many parts of the country. The start of the COVID pandemic caused many issuing agencies to close their doors or limit taking applications via appointment, which in turn caused a huge backlog of applications and wait times of a year or more for folks from Philadelphia to southern California.

Those wait times led to lawsuits and calls for reform from pro-2A lawmakers and Second Amendment advocates, but the problems have persisted in many jurisdictions, in part because of continued high demand for the licenses themselves but also because of staffing shortfalls and even the temporary shutdowns of some offices after positive COVID cases.

Earlier this week we reported on a sheriff’s department in western Pennsylvania that’s dropping its appointment mandate and allowing applicants to resume walking in and dropping off their applications, which should dramatically speed up the process, and now there’s word from one California county that they’ve been able to deal with its own backlog and is now approving (or in a few cases, denying) applications in a timely manner.