Louisiana Budget Crisis: We Don’t Have Money To Process Your Permit Applications

By James England

BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA — Louisiana State Police has some unpleasant news for concealed carry license applicants: wait times are growing and will likely continue to grow. Before you proverbially shoot the messenger, the LSP chief was clear on the reason. The Louisiana legislature has not authorized the spending to enable the state police to do overtime to ensure applications are processed in a timely fashion.

In an interview with KSLA 12, Col. Mike Edmonson of the Louisiana State Police said the issue originates with a slash in the allocated budget in 2016. Strapped between actual criminal cases and administrative paperwork, officers are being stuck choosing which one to dedicate time to because they are not authorized the overtime necessary to do both.

“When you’re actually trying to solve a homicide, you just don’t stop those services. You don’t say ‘Okay I can only send you one person instead of two, maybe I can only do half of the fingerprints,’” Edmonson said to KSLA 12.

Wait times experienced by Louisiana applicants have extended from the normal 4 to 6 weeks to upwards of 8 weeks. One concealed carry instructor, Wade Duty, reports that some students are even experiencing longer wait times.

“I think …Read the Rest

Source:: Concealed Nation