Recently I watched a short video of Sheriff Bill Gore speaking to the Latino American Political Association (LAPA) here in San Diego. The part of the talk captured on the video concerns Sheriff Gore discussing his CCW policy. Sheriff Gore makes a number of misleading statements in the video. You can view the video and the response from SDCGO Executive Director Michael Schwartz to those misleading statements here.
I’m not going to address those statements in this piece (watch for future articles) but instead will examine some of the numbers that the Sheriff mentioned during his talk. The number I’d like to focus on is the 1500 CCW permits that he was proud to say existed in San Diego County.
When taken out of context as presented, the 1500 number is fairly meaningless. Sheriff Gore attempts to add some context by mentioning the 300 permit holders in Los Angeles County and that the city of San Francisco has only 8 total. He doesn’t mention Orange County but we’ll address that in a minute.
Lets add a little more context. Here are some numbers for the United States:
US Population total 321,000,000
US Adult Population (est.) 250,535,988
Number of CCW permit holders nationally 16 million
Percent of adult Americans with CCW permits 6.4%
Here are some numbers for San Diego County:
Total San Diego County Population 3,317,749
San Diego County Adult Population (est.) 2,587,844
Number of CCW permit holders in SD County 1500
Percent of adults in SD County with CCW permits 0.06%
If we in San Diego County were in line with the rest of America the number of CCW permit holders in the county should be around 165,622 or over 100 times the current number.
Even in California where CCW numbers are depressed compared to the rest of the country the San Diego policy doesn’t make sense. Orange County Ca. has a population of about 3.17 million yet they’ve issued over 11,000 CCW permits. This number is growing rapidly due to a recent change in the OC “good cause” policy. To date they’ve had no problems with their CCW holders.
Put into context Sheriff Gore’s 1500 permit holder number speaks for itself. The State gives Sheriff Gore complete authority to define “good cause” however he chooses. It is his decision and his alone to issue CCW permits to qualified citizens or not. Presently Sheriff Gore has chosen to deny you the ability to defend yourself and your loved ones outside the home.
By Joe Drammissi
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