Chatham County, GA - Weapons License Application Violations © 2018 Phillip Evans

If you live in Chatham County, GA and have applied for a new or renewal Georgia Weapons Carry License in order to carry a handgun, be prepared to wait. A long time. (There are some things you can do, so stick with me until the end of the article).

A long forum thread over at GeorgiaPacking.org details the wait times people have been going through.

Image by Arkyan

Normally, the NICS check comes back immediately from FBI and is time-stamped. From that time-stamp, the Probate Judge, per state law, has 10 days (not weeks) to issue the license.

A few forum member comments:

Dated May 27th 2017:

"Wife finally received it, after leaving four messages for the person who does the licensing and then a fifth phone call to the general probate court and asking for that person, who supposedly had 'laryngitis'. Anyway, applied Feb 17th, received May 26. 14 weeks."

Dated Aug 22, 2017:  "11 weeks now, and they refuse to answer the phone. My license expires tomorrow, and the temporary is apparently good for 90 days from date of renewal application... which has it running out September 3."

Dated Aug 25, 2017: "So the probate judge himself called me today! He was very apologetic about the delay, but said my license had 'gone to print' today. Apparently they had a pretty bad manpower shortage when he took the position in January (2017), and on top of that the chief clerk apparently died suddenly in his sleep a couple weeks ago. They hired someone specifically to do weapons license processing and she is in training this week 'to learn ways of doing them better and faster'."  ***

Dated Nov 21, 2017:  "Well by some miracle I finally got a hold of someone there that could tell me what is going. I applied for renewal on June 20th and they are supposedly going to finally mail my new permit out on Monday. So much for following the law about the time frame they have to work with."

Dated Feb 5th, 2018:  For the 30 mins I was there to get my renewal done, they must have done at least 10 marriage licenses. They mentioned they had a backlog of over 400 firearms licenses in the system. I got the impression that those were not a priority, the focus seemed to be on other things.

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I used the form at: https://www.chathamcountyga.gov/Government/RecordsRequest/ to submit the following open records act request to them:

"I'd like electronic copies emailed to me of any documents from 2017 and 2018 pertaining to the delay citizens are having trying to obtain either a new or renewal Georgia Weapons Carry License. This is getting ridiculous, and the excuses are rather hollow. The fact is, you are violating state law. If you prioritized, you would not be this far behind. Someone needs to be fired, and you need to get within the law pronto.  I will be encouraging people to call you to get answers about their license application, and to sue you if they do not get some satisfaction. Enough of this foolishness!"

On their website they have the following:

http://www.chathamcourts.org/Probate-Court/Concealed-Weapon-Permits

"We simply do not have a sufficient number of staff or a sufficient amount of space to handle the high number of Weapons Carry Applications which come to this Court.  Our best estimate is that it takes five months to process your application.  We find both this delay and your inconvenience totally unacceptable, and I apologize to you for them. " (emphasis mine)

Here is their contact info:

(912) 652-7266 - Licenses
(912) 652-7265 - Judge Thomas C. Bordeaux, Jr.

You can also call Attorney General Chris Carr to log a formal complaint against Chatham County at (404) 656-3300.

To initiate a mandamus action suit against them, contact Georgia Carry Atty. John R. Monroe at (678) 362-7650.

*** They've had a year since their chief clerk died to get their act together, but to this date have not. Their excuses now hold no more water than a bucket filled with holes.

Be sure to contact your local news media in Chatham County to ask them to run with this story. Embarrass them into coming into compliance with state law!

Update at:

http://pursuitofpatriotism.blogspot.com/2018/02/chatham-county-ga-weapons-license_8.html