Got my Wyoming concealed carry permit today. Meant more to me than when I got my driver’s license. (I didn’t get a driver’s license until I was 21, and never really drove much.) Getting a concealed weapon permit is a large part of the reason I moved to Wyoming….getting one is pretty much impossible in Los Angeles County, unless you’re a movie star or a judge.
You have to live in Wyoming six months before you can apply, and it took a month to get it. I’ve been here seven months, and have been open carrying the whole time. It was a trip to actually conceal carry, walk down the street, go to the library, go eat lunch with the wife. It felt good, like walking on the moon.
The libertarian in me doesn’t like the idea of needing a government-endorsed card to practice an inalienable right, but the Republican in me digs being able to get the card, and getting it.
Ironically for me, the Wyoming legislature is currently mulling a bill that would allow concealed carry without a permit, and that bill may pass. (Yay!). But my permit will still allow me to carry in Utah, the Dakotas, Montana and a bunch of other states. (Not New York or California though! Those places are no friends of freedom.)
Also ironic is that my permit was available yesterday for pickup, but it was Presidents’ Day, so the office was closed. “President’s Day” is what they call it, but it’s officially called “George Washington’s Birthday”, and I think George would have been appalled at the idea of needing a permit to carry a gun. He didn’t need no stinking papers to carry!
Anyway, it’s a really good day, and I’m very happy!
–Michael W. Dean
Tags: ccw, conceled carry permit, gun rights, Wyoming
Congrats and many happy carry days in the future to you!
Thanks!!
MWD
Welcome to the “dark side,” my brother!
Lol….thanks!
Are you carrying every day these days? I know you have a permit, but sometimes don’t.
I think there may be a lot of people like that.
Carry every day!
MWD
I carry every day now, brother.
Stuck the .357 in my belt today for the first time and forgot I had the .380 in my jacket pocket, so was REDUNDANTLY CARRYING. My old knees couldn’t handle the stress of all the weight I was packing!
Yay! If you’re gonna carry, you might as well do it every day.
And there ain’t nothing wrong with two guns.
MWD
Why do you need a “permit” to carry? Nice of you to register yourself with the Gestapo. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it.
They already know who I am.
MWD
Congrats man!!! Here in Bogotá they’re going to suspend all gun carrying permits ’till March 15. Just what we need, more unprotected people when crime is running rampant
Godopunk….why suspend them. election?
How hard is it to get one there?
The Wyoming state Constitution says no entity can suspend the rights of law-abiding citizens to have guns. (that’s a reaction to the gun confiscations in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina.)
MWD
Maybe it has to do with the upcoming congressional elections (most likely), but the excuse was giving some continuity to former mayorship measures “to love is to be disarmed”.
To answer your questions: it’s hard getting a gun or a gun permit here, I don’t even own a gun and didn’t like’em in the first place, but your site and recent muggings have made me rethink that position (my colombian grandpa did have one). We don’t have some thing like the 2nd ammendment in our constitution (a constitution made by former guerrillas and a bunch of liberals in 1991). And we don’t have a federal system but a centralist one, so all laws are for the whole territory (huge mistake if you ask me, we stopped being the United States of Colombia in 1886).
To sum it up, few people have gun permits, so the measure is kind of stupid, because anyways criminals (including guerrillas) get their arms illegaly anyway, so as you always remind us, government is only making people more vulnerable instead of strong.
“We don’t have some thing like the 2nd ammendment in our constitution (a constitution made by former guerrillas and a bunch of liberals in 1991).”
—
Historically, isn’t that usually the way with revolutions? Guns are good, everyone should have one to overthrow the tyrannical government, until the job is done, then the people can’t be trusted with guns?
Getting a gun permit in Wyoming is about as hard as getting a driver’s license, which is easy. Though it’s only a $750 dollar fine if you don’t have one (as long as you’re not committing a crime), so a lot of honest, non-criminal people carry without a permit, and the state Republicans are in the process of trying to eliminate the need for a permit.
MWD
Take in mind that we still have an “ongoing revolution” fronted by communist guerrillas, so the word revolution here isn’t as popular know as it was in the years of independence. And the 1991 Constitution (it’s like our 23rd constitution in history) was a product of a peace pact between the government and one of the most dangerous guerrilla groups.
Maybe I’ll have to take advantage of my dual citizenship status and accelerate “project Wyoming”
yay!
MWD
Congrats Michael! Still haven’t gotten mine, but if that concealed carry law passes in Wyoming I may not need one.
The reason I say that is because: 1. If Wyoming passes it, Montana MIGHT follow suit. I doubt it, but it’s possible. 2. I’m seriously starting to consider moving to Wyoming. Montana is going down the tubes farther and farther with every session of the legislature, and I’m sick of it. It’s quite conceivable that the company I work for could open a location in Sheridan some time in the future. If they were to do so, it would be EXTREMELY tempting to transfer. I doubt that I’d pack up and move without that sort of incentive, but if things keep going the way they have been, it’ll be looking pretty good within the next few years.
Justin
come on down!
MWD
The photo looks just like you.
Our local office has an uglifyer lens on it. Even my wife looks like an ex-con.
LOL!
You get the photo taken here at the DMV.
Wyoming is so laid back and polite that if you ask nicely, they’ll let you try two or three shots until you get a good one.
My driver’s license photo even looks pretty good too.
I’ve never spent more than 20 minutes in and out at the DMV here. Usually more like ten. In Los Angeles, I’d spend three hours, minimum, WITH an appointment. And a few times a fist fight broke out in the line there.
Here the line is mellow and is in CHAIRS….you move over one chair each time someone is finished.
I told this to a friend in a smaller town in Wyoming, he said “It took you 20 minutes? Man…Casper must be getting crowded these days.”
MWD
I feel safer already.