Conceal-carry law has officials scrambling to keep up

Implementing Missouri's new conceal-carry law has caused some participating agencies to stumble across a few glitches they're only now discovering.

Cape Girardeau County Sheriff John Jordan said he wasn't anticipating the questions about where the crime reduction fund money came from that will pay for incidental costs involved in processing the applications for the permits. Counties no longer have a crime reduction fund that defendants pay into, although a proposal to re-establish one with a different name recently cleared the House of Representatives.

Mainly the fund is a discretionary account that is not fueled by taxpayer money. The Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Department has a contract with a company that installs telephones which jail inmates use to call their attorneys and make other calls, all collect. The sheriff's department receives a commission from that of about $40,000 to $50,000 annually.

A three-member board, made up of the sheriff, the presiding commissioner and the recorder of deeds, approves expenditures made from that fund, limited to law enforcement equipment and expenses.

It is from that fund that the sheriff will pay for postage and other minor expenses related to processing the applications for conceal-carry permits.

The discretionary account that applicants for a conceal-carry permit pay $45 into will be used exclusively for equipment and training related to concealed carry, Jordan said.

In addition to local concerns, the state's Department of Revenue finds itself jotting down questions relating to how it will record the information it gets from county sheriffs.

The DOR said that because each sheriff's department has its own certificate that it issues to applicants, it will be up to the individual officers to enter that information into DOR's database. They won't have access to that database until July 1.

"We will confirm it is in the computer and that will allow us to issue a new driver's license with the endorsement," Robinson said.

The certificates the sheriffs issue between now and July 1 will be valid and will allow the holders to carry a concealed firearm until they can get it printed on their driver's license. After July 1, according to the statute, applicants will have seven days from the time they get their permit to take it to the license bureau to have the information printed on a new driver's license. What the DOR doesn't know yet, Robinson said, is what happens on the eighth day: Is the certificate still valid, or does the application process begin anew?

"That is something we will have to clarify," Robinson said.

On the driver's license under the "endorsements" designation, next to the photo, is where the DOR will indicate that the holder is approved to carry a concealed firearm. Once the applicant takes the certificate to the license bureau, and if his driver's license is within a few months of expiring, he will be issued a new six-year license that will expire not six years from the day he got the new license with the endorsement, but six years from his birthday.

Anyone who still has a few years left before his license expires will simply be issued a new license and pay the same rate he would pay for a duplicate license. It will be valid until its original expiration date.

But for those who are between the ages of 21 and 69, if they get a new six-year license with the conceal-carry endorsement, they'll be back three years later to get another license. Driver's licenses are issued for six years; conceal- carry permits are approved for three.

Motorists between the ages of 18 and 20 and over 70 have three-year licenses; one must be 23 to have a conceal-carry permit.

When the law changed the duration of the driver's license from three years to six, Robinson said, that reduced the number of applications and the amount of work in her office, a reduction that may be temporary.

"Depending on how many people get concealed carry, it will up the volume of work again," she said.