One of the most popular — and of course most read — sections of our paper is the On the Record report. Each week On the Record recaps the calls that came into the local sheriff’s department. We have, on occasion, inadvertently left the On the Record report out of the paper, and rest assured, we hear about it soon after the Star Herald hits the street.
The part of the On the Record report I would like to write about is always included toward the end of the report. The last couple of inches of the weekly report is kind of lumping together the miscellaneous activity. This is where you will find the number of ambulance calls, parking violations, animal complaints, traffic stops that were handled during the week. Also mixed in with those calls is the number of purchase/carry permits that were applied for that week at the sheriff’s department.
Last week four such permits were applied for, and this week one more was run through the office. In case you are unaware what a purchase/carry permit is, it is a permit one has to have in order to purchase a handgun. The “carry” part of that is permission to carry a concealed handgun. In order to apply for the carry permit, you have to complete a classroom course and shooting skills test and then a background check by the sheriff’s department.
I personally have a purchase/carry permit. The point that I am getting to is this. Year to date, I have tallied up the number of permits that have been applied for so far this year with the Rock County sheriff’s department, and the total is about 112 according to the weekly On the Record report. That doesn’t mean that all the applications were granted. So if the current application trend continues till the end of the year, that means over 200 permits will have been applied for or renewed. The purchase/carry permit that I have must be renewed every five years. So for discussion’s sake, let’s say that over a five-year period of time somewhere around 1,000 purchase/carry permits will be applied for.
Now, finally to my point. With the number of permits being applied for, you would think we would have a local public shooting range for handguns, but we don’t. The Sportsman’s Club east of town is for shotguns only. There is a small pistol range out by the transfer station, but that is for law enforcement use only.
Just planting a seed.