In what may be a first, some concealed weapons permits were issued Monday to Missouri residents who had not yet cleared criminal background checks.

The police chief in Hallsville, Mo., near Columbia, issued the permits because a state law says he must do so if state and federal background checks are not completed within 45 days of the permit application.

According to Police Chief Pete Herring, more than 40 persons are eligible for permits because 45 days has passed since they applied.

“I'm working within the confines of the law,” Herring said Monday. “If it was up to me, no one would get a permit until they are cleared.”

Herring said that he did Missouri criminal records checks on the applicants but that the Missouri Highway Patrol and the FBI had not completed background checks based on fingerprints.

An attorney for plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the weapons law said he had long feared that permits would be issued without completion of background checks.

“The problem is, you could be issuing a permit to a felon, to a person convicted of spouse abuse, you don't know,” said the attorney, Richard C. Miller of Kansas City. “It seems to me it could be dangerous.”

A permit will be revoked, Herring said, if reports come back showing a criminal history that bars the holder from concealing a weapon. But Miller said that could be too late to prevent a crime.

Under a state law enacted early this year, sheriffs are required to issue gun permits to qualified applicants. A lawsuit claiming the law is an unfunded mandate on counties has kept 48 counties from taking applications. The sheriff in Boone County, where Hallsville is situated, authorized Herring to issue permits, but the county is not issuing them.

The Missouri Highway Patrol has been doing background checks on more than 4,500 gun-permit applicants statewide in recent months, said Capt. Chris Ricks.The patrol has been able to get most of the checks done within a couple of weeks, but there has been a problem getting information from Boone County court system about Hallsville applicants involved in court cases, Ricks said.

Boone County has an electronic court records system that was not adaptable to the patrol's computer system until recently, Ricks said, so determining the disposition of cases has been done through manual searches and phone calls.

Until the patrol can verify that pertinent cases involving gun-permit applicants have been dismissed or resolved, it cannot issue reports clearing them, Ricks said.

The patrol is trying to resolve those cases, Ricks said. In all, more than 200 people have applied for permits in Hallsville, Herring said.

Background checks that the patrol is conducting on gun-permit applicants come on top of checks it is required to do on potential teachers, adoptive parents, bus drivers and others, Ricks said. Herring said he didn't fault the patrol.

“The work has gone up there exponentially,” Herring said.

Ricks said he was not aware of permits being issued anywhere but in Hallsville to applicants who have not cleared background checks. Jim Vermeersch, executive director of the Missouri Sheriffs Association, said he also was not aware of similar situations.

Kansas City area lawyer Kevin Jamison, president of the Western Missouri Shooters Alliance, said no one in law enforcement was likely to issue a permit without doing at least some criminal records check.

“They are not going to screw this thing up by handing them out like gumdrops,” Jamison said.

To reach Kevin Murphy, call

(816) 234-4464 or send email to

kmurphy@kcstar.com.