Gun rights journalist Cam Edwards, on his show Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co, says San Francisco has managed to do something even many anti-gun jurisdictions usually avoid: it turned law-abiding concealed carry holders into non-carriers overnight, not by changing the law, but by simply letting their permits expire.
Edwards bases much of his criticism on reporting from San Francisco Public Safety News, which first revealed that Sheriff Paul Miyamoto’s office allowed multiple concealed carry weapons (CCW) permits to lapse, even though the holders had filed their renewal paperwork on time.
In a statement quoted by San Francisco Public Safety News, Miyamoto admitted the failures and tried to own them.
“We have experienced administrative delays in processing renewals and I take full responsibility for the Sheriff’s Office failure to process and renew CCW permits, which resulted in some unintentionally expiring,” Miyamoto said. “This should not have happened.”
As Edwards points out, that apology is better than stonewalling. But it doesn’t change the fact that people who followed every rule now cannot legally carry a firearm in one of the country’s highest-crime cities, through no fault of their own.
A Bruen World With Old San Francisco Habits
San Francisco Public Safety News reminds readers that CCW permitting in the city only truly opened up after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
Before Bruen, San Francisco authorities essentially refused to issue permits to ordinary, law-abiding residents. After the ruling struck down “good cause” requirements, Sheriff Miyamoto’s office finally began accepting applications.
But how they did it is telling.
According to San Francisco Public Safety News, the Sheriff’s Office built a process that often took 18 months and “imposed some of the strictest requirements in the state,” including a psychological evaluation or interview with a psychologist.
Post-Bruen, the sheriff issued 163 permits, each valid for two years. Now, those two-year terms are expiring, and renewals are piling up. As of the latest reporting, officials say 43 applications are pending.
On Cam & Co, Edwards notes that these weren’t casual applicants. These were people who jumped through every hoop San Francisco and the state of California could dream up, waited months or even a year and a half, and finally walked away with a hard-won permit to exercise what the Supreme Court says is a fundamental right.
Then, when the time came to renew, they mailed in their paperwork and watched the clock. The government did nothing, the expiration dates passed, and their legal carry status vanished.
Budget Excuses, Real-World Consequences
Sheriff Miyamoto has a familiar explanation.
“The delays are the direct result of significant shortages within our professional staff ranks,” he said in a statement quoted by San Francisco Public Safety News. “Due to city budget cuts, we are currently operating with only 63% of our normal professional staffing levels. This reduction has had a substantial impact on our ability to process CCW applications and renewals in a timely manner.”
On Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co, Edwards points out that this is almost the exact same excuse being used by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which is also struggling with long wait times for carry permits and renewals.
He adds another important piece: under California law, agencies are supposed to process permits within 120 days. Edwards argues that 120 days is already far too long for someone exercising a constitutional right, but even that generous deadline is being blown past with no automatic penalty for the agency.
In practice, that means the statute gives a timeline but no teeth. As Edwards explains, nothing happens under state law if a sheriff doesn’t meet the deadline. The only “remedy” is litigation, either by private Second Amendment groups or, now, by the U.S. Department of Justice’s new Second Amendment Section.
While Miyamoto insists in San Francisco Public Safety News that “we are not attempting to block or limit anyone’s lawful right to carry a firearm,” Edwards isn’t buying that intent matters much to the people stuck in the middle.
“Intended or not, that’s the reality,” he says on the show. The result is the same: “People’s rights are being denied to them.”
DOJ Warns San Francisco: Fix This or Get Sued
In a follow-up article, San Francisco Public Safety News reports that the U.S. Department of Justice has now weighed in, and they are not mincing words.
The outlet says DOJ officials accused Sheriff Miyamoto and the city of violating the Constitution by allowing timely renewal applicants to have their permits lapse because the Sheriff’s Office didn’t act.
“San Francisco’s failure to adequately staff its agencies while wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on woke projects, high-tech public toilets and mismanaged nonprofits is not an excuse to violate the constitution,” a DOJ spokeswoman said, according to San Francisco Public Safety News.
The DOJ also warned city leaders that if they don’t “get their house in order,” they could face a lawsuit similar to the one the department filed against Los Angeles County in September over delayed CCW processing.
That case, as San Francisco Public Safety News points out, accuses Los Angeles of infringing residents’ Second Amendment rights by failing to decide applications promptly.
Edwards, who has been closely following the DOJ Civil Rights Division’s new Second Amendment Section, says on Cam & Co that Miyamoto has basically “gifted” the DOJ a perfect test case: a city that acknowledges delays, admits permits expired because of government inaction, and still hasn’t promised a clear fix.
He argues that whether the blame lies with the sheriff, the board of supervisors, or both, someone in city government chose priorities that left the carry unit understaffed while other pet projects kept getting funded.
SFPD Stays Quiet, And Rights Don’t Cross The Street
One interesting angle in San Francisco Public Safety News that Edwards calls out is the role of the San Francisco Police Department.
Under California law, both the Sheriff’s Office and SFPD are authorized to issue concealed carry permits in the city. When the outlet asked the department – now led by newly installed Chief Derrick Lew – about their own issuance practices and whether they were handling renewals promptly, a spokesman declined to comment.
Edwards flags that silence as a bad sign. If SFPD were fully up to date and efficiently processing renewals, he suggests they would almost certainly be touting that fact and distancing themselves from the sheriff’s mess.
Instead, residents are left with two parallel issuing authorities, one of which has admitted to letting permits expire, and the other of which has nothing to say.
From the everyday permit holder’s perspective, none of the bureaucratic finger-pointing really matters.
A San Franciscan who followed every rule is now unarmed on city streets because a public office didn’t do its job on time. If that person crosses a bridge into another county, they might find a sheriff that processes renewals efficiently. But inside San Francisco’s borders, their rights live or die based on staffing charts, budget fights, and internal policies they never see.
A Lawsuit Waiting To Happen
Edwards ties the situation back to the Supreme Court’s language in Bruen, which said “shall-issue” licensing systems can be constitutional, but warned that excessive delays or exorbitant fees could turn them into Second Amendment violations.
Here, he argues, San Francisco has crossed that line.
Residents already endured one of the strictest and slowest processes in California just to get a permit, complete with lengthy wait times and psychological interviews, as reported by San Francisco Public Safety News. Now, at renewal time, the city’s own negligence has yanked away their ability to legally carry.
In a practical sense, that’s no different from a de facto ban for those specific individuals.
The DOJ’s new Second Amendment Section, as both Edwards and San Francisco Public Safety News note, is actively looking for enforcement cases. San Francisco’s combination of admitted failures, lapsed permits, and unapologetic budget-based excuses looks tailor-made for federal civil rights litigation.
Edwards says on Cam & Co that if the DOJ doesn’t act, he expects one of the major gun-rights organizations in California will. And he wouldn’t be surprised if, a few years down the line, “a case against the sheriff” over this very issue shows up on a Supreme Court conference list.
From a broader perspective, this story isn’t just about paperwork that fell through the cracks. It’s about what happens when local officials treat a fundamental right like a low-priority administrative task that can be paused whenever City Hall tightens the belt.
Whether you support concealed carry or not, there’s a simple rule in any constitutional system: if the government insists you ask permission to exercise a right, it bears the responsibility to answer in time.
In San Francisco, as described by San Francisco Public Safety News and dissected by Cam Edwards, that responsibility has clearly been broken – and the people paying the price are the ones who tried hardest to follow the law.
A former park ranger and wildlife conservationist, Lisa’s passion for survival started with her deep connection to nature. Raised on a small farm in northern Wisconsin, she learned how to grow her own food, raise livestock, and live off the land. Lisa is our dedicated Second Amendment news writer and also focuses on homesteading, natural remedies, and survival strategies. Lisa aims to help others live more sustainably and prepare for the unexpected.
