Welcome to Wisconsin, where that state announced it has issued its 200,000th carry permit.
(Journal-Sentinel) – Wisconsin has reached a concealed weapons permit milestone.
Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced Tuesday that permit number 200,000 was printed Monday at the Department of Justice’s secure processing center in downtown Madison.
Wisconsin became the 49th state to license people to carry concealed weapons in 2011 with the passage of Act 35. The law took effect Nov. 1 that year and Van Hollen announced extra staffing to handle the expected rush of applicants.
And with a population of 5.7 million, or less than half of Illinois’ 12.9 million, the recent announcement from the Illinois State Police that they expected to issue 400,000 permits to carry in 2014 is pretty believable.
Frankly, we at GSL and some at the NRA were initially estimating only 300,000 Illinoisans would apply next year.
Meanwhile, in Illinois, nearly three months after right-to-carry was approved, Illinois doesn’t even have a permit application, much less has it issued any licenses.
Maybe Wisconsin can cross talk to ISP to share their intelligence so ISP can issue more than 400.0K in Dec 2014.
And many openly carry without a permit too. Something interestingly absent from this piece.
I can remember fifteen years ago when off-duty police from IL didn’t dare carry in Wisconsin for fear of arrest.
Now I as a civilian can open carry there without a permit?
My, how times have changed.
I might have to visit Wisconsin before I die…
Samuel – it was courageous OPEN carriers who got concealers their permits! They took after the AG and got em to admit that there was no law forbidding open carry and they boldly exercised that right while concealed carry remained unlawful.
This got the legislature in gear -especially after some open carry protests and a couple settlements over disorderly conduct arrests. They looked at present precedent and decided to take gun politics off the table. Open carry – no permission slip required. Concealed? Get yer training and yer permit.
I gotta wonder – why won’t concealed carriers here stand with open carry advocates and say “we will not throw open carriers under the bus “? Why do they instead choose to pretend they aren’t doing exactly that when IN FACT that’s EXACTLY what’s going in?
It totally turned into the wild west.
Oh wait……..
No it didnt.