Food for thought after being pulled over by a LEO for the first time while carrying

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If you're armed and decide to disclose that to the officer, presenting the carry permit is probably the best way to go in my opinion even though it won't mark you as "one of the good guys", and will probably not make the officer any less wary.

Just be courteous and natural. Using "sir/officer/deputy/trooper with every other word seems suspicious. Act like a normal human being who isn't trying to get away with anything and things will probably turn out just fine.
 
...a valid FOID and CCW tells the officer absolutely nothing about what you might have done and never been arrested for or what you may have been involved in recently. All it says is that at the time it was issued you had a clean record.

A CCW permit means that you are legally authorized to carry a firearm on your person. That is all it means. It doesn’t attest to your character or state of mind at the time of the contact. I have seen people from all walks of life act badly during a police contact. There are no guarantees on the side of the road.

The CCW community likes to tell everyone that will listen that they are certified good guys. The community would do well to dismiss that notion and accept the fact that everyone who gets a CCW isn’t just like you are. There are as many different motives for getting a CCW as there are people who get them.

There are no certified good guys. There are just human beings with all of the faults that human beings can possess. Any officer who completely drops his guard because the person he has stopped is an off duty officer or a CCW holder is not working safely.
That is the precisely the way it is!
 
They do a daily background check on you? Can you cite your source for that please?

Attached is an article from the Chicago Tribune explaining the background checks. I copied and pasted the statement referring to daily background checks.

Once the card is issued, the State Police reruns each cardholder through the FBI system every 24 hours and revokes the card of anyone who has incurred a recent infraction.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-obama-gun-control-illinois-impact-met-20160105-9-story.html
 
Attached is an article from the Chicago Tribune explaining the background checks. I copied and pasted the statement referring to daily background checks.

Once the card is issued, the State Police reruns each cardholder through the FBI system every 24 hours and revokes the card of anyone who has incurred a recent infraction.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-obama-gun-control-illinois-impact-met-20160105-9-story.html



I wonder how many man hours that wastes daily and how much it clogs the system
 
If you have a FOID your name is run every 24 hours, so they’ll know pretty quickly if you’ve been arrested
No.

It tells them what has been properly entered into the NICS system regarding ... within the FOID refresh interval.

(Edited to reflect Jeff White's response.)
 
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A little information on how the system works. Inside baseball so to speak. An entry into NCIC is done with an arrest card. This arrest card has the subject's fingerprints and information about the offense he is accused of and any cautions. If the arresting agency uses electronic fingerprinting that information is transmitted to the FBI electronically. If the arresting agency uses hard copy arrest cards it goes by US Mail. Hard copy cards are then entered into the system. As you can see there can be a significant lag between the disqualifying arrest and the information showing up in the system.

In Illinois arrests can be made via a Notice to Appear in Court. I've seen felony arrests happen that way. When that happens there is no official record of the arrest until the court date at which time the judge orders the person to report to the arresting agency for completion of the arrest card if the subject is released on bond. So a subject may be given a notice to appear and it will be a month before there is ever an arrest card documenting the arrest in the system.

The holes in the system are just as obvious when it comes to approving people to buy guns. One of the copies of the arrest card is a court disposition copy. This is completed by the Clerk of the Court and is sent off to the FBI to give the outcome of the charges. If a charge is dropped, reduced or there is an acquittal it can take days or weeks for that information to get to the FBI. This results in denials in the system and someone has to call the courthouse for a manual lookup. A citizen is then denied his constitutional right, hopefully only temporarily.

Despite the propaganda on both sides of the gun debate, the NICS check system, FOID and FID cards and CCW permits have no practical public safety benefit. If someone wants a gun they will get one, if someone wants to commit a crime...they will. No criminal was ever stopped by the thought that what he was going to do was illegal.
 
I really don't care if it makes the cop's life easier or that it makes him more comfortable that I automatically inform him I'm armed. It's in my best interests to maintain my boundaries and assert my Rights.
I cannot understand why anyone would not prefer an officer at a traffic stop to have as few grounds for suspicion and concern as possible.

I don't think the fact that the person stopped had been approved for carrying a firearm would be very useful, but I think the courtesy of informing might help.

We do not have a duty to inform here, but I don't see how not informing would be a useful way to "assert my rights."
 
I wonder how many man hours that wastes daily and how much it clogs the system
The process described would be quite trivial to program, computers would do the matching automagically, humans would only be needed to review the records of people with a new infraction.

Edited to take Jeff's last post into account: Jeff describes the human effort relating to getting the new infraction into the system in the first place. But matching the records of permit holders to new infractions would require very little human work.
 
I cannot understand why anyone would not prefer an officer at a traffic stop to have as few grounds for suspicion and concern as possible.

I don't think the fact that the person stopped had been approved for carrying a firearm would be very useful, but I think the courtesy of informing might help.

We do not have a duty to inform here, but I don't see how not informing would be a useful way to "assert my rights."

Did you read my first post? I have zero duty to inform, the cop asked me if I had any weapons in the vehicle within a minute of approaching my car and I handed him the permit.

His reaction was to threaten to arrest me for violating a law THAT DOESN'T EXIST IN COLORADO.

The fact that this guy was approved to be a cop wasn't very useful, he took his wife hostage, then murdered her a few months later when she asked him for a divorce.

I don't think he was the one who had grounds for suspicion or concern.

That guy isn't the only cop (Daniel Harless, Chris Dornier) like that out there. There used to be a cop here that stated that if he ever saw a gun on a motorist's hip he'd take them out of the car at gun point, prone them out then handcuff them. Basically he was going to make sure they never forgot to respect the badge again.

I volunteer nothing to the police and I don't answer questions I'm not legally obligated to answer.
 
In my humble opinion, everyone always way overthinks this topic.

When I was doing vehicle stops, I always assumed (1) there was a firearm in the vehicle and (2) the driver and/or passengers were armed -- even in SoCal where there was no such thing as legal CCW for citizens, but more so in this this state (the original shall-issue state with a long-standing gun-toting culture) --- and there's no duty to inform in this state. I (and my buddies) always strove to be in a heightened state of alertness (back-up standard after dark) and maintain good visual on all vehicle occupants. I was always kinda puzzled when a well-meaning citizen felt compelled to tell me that he was legally packing.

For the most part, I always assumed that if someone intended to do me harm, they were not going to tell me they had a gun anyway.
 
I cannot understand why anyone would not prefer an officer at a traffic stop to have as few grounds for suspicion and concern as possible.

I don't think the fact that the person stopped had been approved for carrying a firearm would be very useful, but I think the courtesy of informing might help.

We do not have a duty to inform here, but I don't see how not informing would be a useful way to "assert my rights."

This. It's the courtesy and being upfront that puts the officer at ease. Not the possession of the permit itself.
 
Y'all can obviously do what you want but I will choose to inform as its worked well for me so far and it's what I would prefer if I was the LEO.

Also I dont want to be this guy....




 
I don't think he was the one who had grounds for suspicion or concern.
I've said this a couple times now in this thread, but I think it bears repeating. The police officer pulling you over is statistically more likely to commit or to have committed a violent crime than a CCW holder. There's no more logical reason that a citizen should be required to inform an officer that he's carrying than there's logical reason for the officer to inform the citizen of the location of his backup gun.

For the most part, I always assumed that if someone intended to do me harm, they were not going to tell me they had a gun anyway.
Exactly, which is why this;
I volunteer nothing to the police and I don't answer questions I'm not legally obligated to answer.
, makes sense in a free society.
 
There's no more logical reason that a citizen should be required to inform an officer that he's carrying than there's logical reason for the officer to inform the citizen of the location of his backup gun.

The reason to inform is simply the same courtesy officers show to each other. It takes some of the guess work out of the equation. It also helps keep things from escalating if your weapon is inadvertently exposed during the contact.

But like I said, it’s up to you unless your state requires you to inform. Do whatever you feel right doing.
 
The reason to inform is simply the same courtesy officers show to each other.

But it's not the same courtesy.

If you pull another cop the second he/she shows you that badge the odds of them getting a ticket go to just about nil.

If I get pulled over by a cop the second I show that permit my odds of being taken out of the car and disarmed go up astronomically.
 
Also I dont want to be this guy....






You realize that guy didn't do ANYTHING illegal right? He did nothing deserving of that cop's response. Do you really not get that?

"Put your hands right there or I'll shoot you in the F***ing back"

"I don't care If he has a permit or not"

I bet that cop is on THR right now whining about how people "don't respect the badge" and I hope the driver owns the entire police department now
 
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If I get pulled over by a cop the second I show that permit my odds of being taken out of the car and disarmed go up astronomically.

The number of permit holders I pulled out of the car and disarmed in my career and this includes out of state permit holders who were technically carrying illegally in Illinois before we had CCW is exactly zero. I’ve pulled people from out of state who were carrying uncased long guns in rear window gun racks to tell them to put the rifle or shotgun under their seat so some overzealous trooper wouldn’t charge them with UUW was at least a half dozen. I even gave one guy from Wyoming an old blanket I had in the trunk to wrap his nice scoped rifle in.

Like I said, you make your own decision....I’m just saying that from the other side of the issue that once the existence of the firearm is out in the open it eliminates a lot of stress. Again, make your own decision.
 
The number of permit holders I pulled out of the car and disarmed in my career and this includes out of state permit holders who were technically carrying illegally in Illinois before we had CCW is exactly zero.

Is that equal to the number of cops you issued a ticket to in your career?
 
I issued tickets to whoever deserved one regardless of if they had a badge or not. I never expected any less if I was pulled over.

It was never about who you were with me.

But if you want to continue to believe that all officers are like the one you had a bad experience with that’s certainly your privilege.

If you fear that you may be disarmed if you notify that you are carrying that’s your business. The thing is, you increase your chances of being disarmed if you don’t notify and your gun is inadvertently exposed. It’s a double edged sword. But it’s your call...
 
This is a topic that gets me extremely riled up especially when I see videos like that and people excusing the behavior.

I have nothing further to add to this discussion.
 
I agree with Trunk Monkey.
I am courteous, polite, and volunteer nothing.

I understand their position however.... any moment has the potential to go sideways.
So, I try to have my info ready, so that my hands need not go digging for things.

Hands are dangerous. keep them visible.

my wife smacked me the first time I was asked "Where are you headed?" and I responded, "Point B!"
 
The county sheriff and GA state patrol were conducting a checkpoint last night on a highway I was traveling on. They asked for my driver license and insurance info. That's what I showed them. I didn't mention I had a carry permit and guns in the car. Don't see why I should. I was polite and courteous of course, but really hate being stopped at checkpoints like I am in the Soviet Union. I guess they make enough in fines to pay for officer salaries.
 
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