Hello DB,
I've been tracking and working on Los Angeles CCW. In fact I'm going to start a website just for this issue. Here's the scoop so far:
According to DoJ records (
http://ag.ca.gov/firearms/forms/pdf/ccwissuances.pdf) , there were 1391 permits issued in Los Angeles in 2003. Los Angeles County has a population of about 10mil. City police chiefs may issue permits, but it's well-known that they rarely do in Los Angles county, so we can make a fairly good estimate that there are 2,000 or fewer CCW holders in LA County. That's out of 10mil people. In states which have gone shall-issue (ie, most of the US) very aproximately 1% of the population ends up getting CCW permits, so if LA is similar (which it is) you would expect about 100,000 CCW permits, not 2,000 permits. (As a side note, it is well-known that for people who need to carry guns, such as private investigators, etc, but don't have the juice to get a permit in LA, they establish a residence in some other county and get their permit that way, so there are probably much more than 2,000 people who live in LAC who have permits, just most of them are not issued by LAC.)
In other words, out of every fifty people you would expect to have / apply for a permit, only one has it here, so the natural question is, what's different about this one person vs. the other 49 who didn't get it (or didn't bother to apply because they knew they wouldn't get it).
Jim March put in a California public records request to get information from Sheriff Baca about who has permits and why (cause statements). That's all public information. Sheriff Baca has not responded. Jim is suing the CA DoJ to force them to hand over the information. That's good. As soon as he gets it, I'll pester him until he gives it to me, and then I'll dig up all of Sheriff Baca's campaign finance records, have them data-entered, and put it all together on a nice website.
Once all that is in place you'll be able to see who has permits, who was rejected, and how much money people did (or did not) contribute to the Friends of Sheriff Baca fund.
Back to your original question: Yes, LAC is "more inclined" than San Francisco, which has issued about ten permits, but it's far from shall issue. For comparison, Orange County, with a population of 2.8mil and a lot less blacks than LAC, has 1225 permit holders.
So:
Los Angeles county CCW: one per 7200
Orange County CCW: one per 2300
(A typical shall-issue state: one per 100)
So, if you want a CCW in California, choose a county that doesn't have very many blacks!
Also, another note, probably a lot of people in CA carry without permits. At worst, it's a misdemeanor, and it's all at the discretion of the officer, who might make a decision to let it go.
I would give Sheriff Baca a "D" rating, not an "F". I would give the sheriff of San Francisco an "F". A few of the rural sheriffs in CA get "A"s. I would like to see Sheriff Baca start doing a better job and improving his grade, or else get a more competent person for the job.
