Really? There's no other way to determine if the person is a felon? No other way at all? Really? What if he's neither a felon, nor has he applied for and obtained a carry license, NOR does he carry a gun? What does your precious system do with people like that, a category into which the majority of your citizens fall?“We believe dismantling the longstanding and effective permitting system without taking additional precautionary steps will weaken public safety,” Bill Bones, Jeff Lavey and Rick Allen, chiefs of police in Ada County, wrote in a letter to the Idaho Statesman last year. “Our concealed weapons licensing system is the only way to determine the person is not a felon or dangerous person prohibited from possessing firearms.”
Of all the lies told by politically motivated police management - because they are elected or appointed - this is the one that most defies logic. A felon who is armed, arms himself regardless of what the law says. Simply running his driver's license will turn up whether or not he is a felon, but that is irrelevant to whether or not he will be armed. Those police chiefs are from Ada County. I looked up Ada County: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_County,_Idaho. Here's what it says:
Three police chiefs in a county which holds the seat of the state's gov't, in a state which has been reliably republican since 1900. With the exception of three years — 1912 (Wilson), and 1932 & 1936 (Roosevelt) — republicans have held a comfortable majority in Ada County. Since then, only one democrat POTUS candidate has carried Idaho - LBJ - in a year when Ada County still remained in republican hands. So the reluctance of a few Ada County police chiefs to be comfortable with Constitutional Carry says one of two things: either (A) the Republican Party is a barrier to Constitutional Carry; or (B) Ada county, which is the center of political power in Idaho, has started to shift to the left.Ada County is a county in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Idaho. As of the 2010 Census, the county had a population of 392,365, making it the most populous county in Idaho. The county seat and largest city is Boise, which is also the state capital.
Given the current state of the Republican Party, either is possible.