Gun Control Advocates Say Lax Utah Permit Rules Lurk Within Senate Bill

Utah police encountered a deadly barrage of gunfire when trying to serve a warrant at a suspect’s house last night. One officer, a seven-year veteran of the force, was killed and five others were wounded before the lone suspect was shot and arrested. The shootout continues a deadly trend from last year, when 71 officers were shot to death, a 20 percent increase over the year before.

The past year was likely a record one for gun sales as well. The FBI reported (PDF) that the number of gun-related background checks skyrocketed in 2011, to nearly 16.5 million, a 15 percent increase over 2010 and the highest number since 1998. The checks don’t perfectly correlate with gun sales, says FBI spokesman Stephen Fischer. They may misrepresent the number of guns sold, because people might not pass the checks, and they fail to capture sales by private dealers at gun shows and online. They certainly overstate the number of sales in Kentucky, the top-ranking state, because officials there run monthly checks on people who hold concealed-weapons permits.

Something similar is likely inflating the number for Utah, which has started rechecking concealed-weapons permits on a quarterly basis and now ranks third in the country for the number of checks performed. But the high number that results from the recounts points to a unique fact of Utah’s gun-control laws: the state hands out a tremendous number of concealed-weapons permits, many to people who never set foot in Utah.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/06/gun-control-advocates-say-lax-utah-permit-rules-lurk-within-senate-bill.html