KENT COUNTY, Mich.– Officials say that the number of concealed pistol permits in West Michigan has risen 200 percent since the same time last year after the debate in Washington heated up over stricter gun laws.
Resident Sarah Vincent said she applied for a license in Kent County back in June. Vincent says she has been calling for the last few months to get updates on the status of things but she’s been told her application is still being processed.
At Thursday’s monthly gun board meeting, city and law enforcement leaders were going through applications from Mid May. They had around 570 applications to sort through, a record-setting number for any meeting.
In 2012, Kent County received 2,864 applications. So far in 2013 they’re already have 3,466. Vincent says she doesn’t understand why they don’t do more to get ahead.
“Maybe they need to re-asses and do something as simple as adding another day, maybe do two Thursday, every other Thursday until they get caught up or maybe re-evaluate and check things out.”
But the Kent County Clerk says as the volume of applications increases, the number of staff needed to process them doesn’t.
We also checked into numbers across other counties in West Michigan and here’s what we found:
Last year in Ottawa County they approved more than 1,491 permits and so far in 2013 there have been 2,615 pending or approved applications.
In Kalamazoo County the clerk says in 2012 they had 1,859 applications and to date this year around 1,831 already.
Along the Lakeshore in Muskegon County in 2012 there were 1,118 people who applied for a permit and from just April to June of 2012 there were more than 600 people that have applied.
