Why getting a concealed carry permit in California can be very difficult

In a recent Gun Owners Radio discussion, host Michael Schwartz sat down with Mark Skoglund of the Warriors Way podcast to talk about a problem many California gun owners already know firsthand: getting a concealed carry permit in this state may be technically possible, but in practice, it can feel wildly different depending on where you live.

The episode, which also featured co-hosts Dakota Adelphia and Alisha Curtin, focused less on abstract legal theory and more on how the system actually works on the ground. That made the conversation useful. Instead of pretending California has one uniform process, Schwartz and Skoglund described a patchwork system where some counties move people through fairly quickly while others bury lawful applicants in delays, bad policies, and layers of inaccessibility.

That is really the heart of the problem.

California may have one state, one set of broad rules, and one constitutional question hovering over all of it, but the lived reality is local. In one county, a sheriff may treat permits as a real public-safety tool. In another, the process can feel like an obstacle course built to wear people down.

Mark Skoglund Says The Biggest Difference Is The Issuing Agency

Schwartz opened one of the most important parts of the discussion by asking Skoglund what ordinary citizens in restrictive counties can actually do if they want to improve their chances, or improve the system itself.

Skoglund’s answer was simple and political before it was procedural: vote.

He argued that people need to keep voting for officials who are willing to secure rights instead of restrict them, and he pointed to Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco as his main example. According to Skoglund, Bianco ran on concealed carry and followed through on it, because he believes law-abiding citizens should be able to protect themselves when law enforcement is still minutes away.

That point may sound obvious to gun owners, but it matters because it explains why California’s CCW system can vary so much.

The issuing agency is not just some neutral office pushing paper. The sheriff, the culture of the department, the people running the unit, and the policy choices being made behind the scenes all shape whether applicants are treated like citizens exercising a right or like problems to be managed.

That local power explains a lot of the frustration Californians feel.

Restrictive Policies Can Be Hard To Challenge

Schwartz then pushed the discussion into something more concrete. He asked Skoglund who is really behind some of the odd county-level restrictions people hear about, like bans on carrying with a red-dot optic or other rules that seem to have little to do with real-world concealed carry.

That was one of the strongest parts of the conversation because it got away from slogans and into bureaucracy.

Skoglund said these policies are often very difficult to reverse once they are in place. In his view, one major reason is that most CCW units are simply not accessible to the public. They take your application, process it on their terms, and that is largely the extent of your relationship with them.

That kind of structure leaves regular applicants with very little leverage.

If a county adopts a rule that makes no practical sense, the average permit holder often has no direct line to the people making the decision. Skoglund contrasted that with his experience in Riverside County, where he said he tried to make the office available to the public and even gave many permit holders his direct cell number so they could reach out if they had problems.

Whether every department should work like that is another debate, but his broader point lands: opacity makes bad policy harder to challenge.

And in California, bad policy tends to stick around once it gets wrapped in official language.

Staffing, Delays, And Agency Culture All Matter

Another reason the process can be so difficult, Skoglund said, is that not every delay is purely ideological. Some of it comes down to staffing and resources.

He noted that even Riverside County, which he described as more responsive than many places, has seen wait times start to increase because agencies are short on people. He said appointments there had once been available within a few weeks, but now can stretch much longer.

That does not excuse hostile counties, but it does add needed nuance.

Sometimes an applicant is running into a policy problem. Sometimes it is a staffing problem. Sometimes it is both. And when those things pile on top of each other, the result is the same for the person trying to apply: delay, uncertainty, and frustration.

That is one reason this issue keeps generating anger. From the outside, applicants often cannot tell whether they are being slowed down by politics, poor management, low staffing, or all three at once.

Whatever the cause, the burden falls on the same person every time.

Riverside Became A Contrast Case For A Reason

Throughout the interview, Riverside County came up again and again as the example of what a more workable system can look like.

Skoglund said his unit worked closely with range staff and internal firearms experts, which let them respond faster to proposed restrictions or state-level policy shifts. He also described Sheriff Bianco as a “trust but verify” kind of leader who stayed actively involved in the concealed carry program rather than treating it like an afterthought.

That matters more than people outside the process might realize.

When leadership actually cares about the program, it tends to show up in smaller ways too: clearer answers, quicker policy decisions, less pointless confusion, and fewer arbitrary roadblocks. When leadership does not care, or worse, quietly dislikes the whole concept of civilian carry, people can feel that too.

The permit process then becomes a kind of bureaucratic shrug.

Schwartz made the point that some sheriffs may formally oversee CCW programs without really knowing the details or involving themselves in policy. Skoglund’s view was that this hands-off approach often helps create the very delays and inconsistencies applicants complain about.

In other words, a county’s CCW system often reflects the seriousness of the people running it.

The System Is Difficult, But Skoglund Says It Is Still Navigable

Near the end of the interview, Schwartz asked what he wanted listeners to take away, and Skoglund gave an answer that may surprise some Californians who have already written the system off as hopeless.

He said getting a concealed carry permit in California is absolutely obtainable.

That was his word, and it is important. He did not pretend every county is easy. He did not deny that some agencies have “built-in delays,” as he put it. But he argued those obstacles can be navigated, especially if applicants understand the process and know what the state actually allows or disqualifies.

That is probably the most useful takeaway from the entire discussion.

California’s CCW system may be broken in places, inconsistent in many others, and far too dependent on county politics, but it is not completely closed off. For lawful applicants, persistence still matters. So does information. So does knowing which part of the process is truly mandatory and which part is just local dysfunction dressed up as policy.

That does not make the system good. It just means people should not assume impossible means unavailable.

And if there was one clear message from Schwartz, Adelphia, Curtin, and Skoglund, it was this: the difficulty is real, but so is the path through it. The problem is that in California, too much of that path still depends on who runs your county, how they view your rights, and whether they think helping lawful citizens carry is part of the job at all.