The Justice Department’s investigation into the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and its snail-like pace in processing concealed carry applications was only announced a couple of weeks ago, but the fingerpointing among L.A. officials has already begun. 

Los Angeles Times reporter Kevin Rector spoke with former sheriff Alex Villanueva, current sheriff Robert Luna, and retired Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl about the delays and what’s causing them, and while most everyone agrees that the department doesn’t have enough staff to process applications in a timely manner, there’s a lot of disagreement over who’s responsible for ensuring that the sheriff’s staff can approve or deny applications in a timely manner. 

In the wake of Bruen, Keuhl wanted the sheriff’s office to “proceed with caution” in adopting a shall-issue standard, while Villanueva boasted that the department would be ramping up its approval process. 

Two months later, the department announced it was investigating “irregularities” in the permitting process and a “possible long-term scheme to defraud” county residents. Soon after, the Times published an investigation showing that some of Villanueva’s political supporters had received permits much more quickly than the average applicant, some with the assistance of deputies working directly for Villanueva. 

No charges have been filed , and a spokesman for Villanueva denied any wrongdoing.

Around the same time in 2022, the department was seeing a “tsunami of applications” for gun permits, it said in a recent court filing.

Sheriff’s Department data provided to the Times show applications picked up around April 2021 — which is when the Supreme Court first said it would take the New York case — and surged after the high court’s ruling in June 2022. Monthly applications, which averaged between 100 and 200 in late 2020 and early 2021, soared to more than 1,000 in late 2022 and early 2023, though they have partially come back down since.

A county auditor-controller report published in late 2022 as a result of Kuehl’s measure found 3,426 active permits and 10,300 pending applications, with an average wait time of about one year. And it warned the county could face legal trouble if it failed to expedite the process and clear the backlog.

The Sheriff’s Department has cited “a significant staffing crisis” as a reason for delays, and in response to the Justice Department probe said it processes applications “in compliance with state and local laws to promote responsible gun ownership.”

County supervisors set the budget for the sheriff’s department, but the sheriff has the ability and authority to shuffle personnel to various departments if needed. According to Rector, before Bruen the LASD had anywhere between three and six staff members working in its permit unit, while there are currently 13 full-time staffers and two others who’ve been temporarily deployed to address the backlog in applications. Luna says that’s all he can spare, given the department’s shortage of deputies, which he estimates at about 1,400 positions. 

“The amount of those requests overwhelm the staff we have,” Luna told Rector, calling the task of processing applications “an unfunded mandate.”

As bad as things are in Los Angeles County, it’s even worse in the city of L.A. 

On March 5, the California Rifle & Pistol Assn. sent a letter to the LAPD and the Los Angeles City Council warning that it would sue them if the LAPD did not immediately devote additional resources to bring down wait times for permits, which it said were averaging more than 18 months in the city.

On March 31, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell responded with his own letter, writing that both requested and issued permits have “increased exponentially” in the last two years, and the department was taking steps to process more applications and bring down wait times.

McDonnell said the LAPD was lending additional officers to its permit unit, and like the county had started using a cloud-based software called Permitium, which was “already enabling the Department to process more applications.”

Still, the LAPD is clearly struggling, other officials have acknowledged, with wait times for permits approaching four years in some cases.

The Supreme Court cautioned in Bruen that even “shall issue” permitting systems could run afoul of the Second Amendment if they resulted in lengthy wait times or excessive fees to obtain a permit, and we’ve seen both of those red flags in jurisdictions throughout the state. A four-year delay is outrageous, and I truly hope that the DOJ will expand its investigation into the Los Angeles sheriff to include the LAPD as well. 

Rector’s piece has several other interesting tidbits and is worth reading in its entirety. The big takeaway is that there’s a lot wrong with the carry process in California, from two-year permits that add to the backlog of applications (and increase the cost to gun owners) to the lack of personnel devoted to processing applications in a timely manner; ensuring that Los Angeles residents can’t exercise a fundamental civil right because the government is standing in their way. I suspect that when the DOJ investigation is complete we’ll learn that there’s plenty of blame to go around. The bigger question is what the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division will do to fix the problem.