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Crime & Safety

Gun Permit Applications Up in Oakdale, Washington County

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Interest in purchasing and carrying guns is up in Oakdale and Washington County.

Washington County saw permit to carry applications nearly double in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period last year, according to the Washington County Sheriff’s office. And Oakdale saw the number of applications for permits to purchase increase by 40 percent from 2010 to 2011, according to the city’s police department statistics.

Paul Blincow, an instructor with MN Tactics who teaches permit to carry classes at the Oakdale Gun Club in Lake Elmo, said the students he’s seeing are interested in personal safety, and tend to come from all points on the political spectrum.

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“I’m seeing more women and more couples in my classes than ever before,” Blincow said. “Firearms have become much more normalized in our society.”

Neither Oakdale nor Washington County has had to increase staffing to deal with the influx of applications, officials said.

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“The staff are doing a tremendous job with the additional work,” said Cmdr. Doug Anschutz of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office. “The staff just keep plugging away.”

Applications for permits to carry in Washington County jumped from 302 in the first quarter of last year to 583 in the first quarter of this year, according to statistics from the Washington County Sheriff’s Office. Oakdale received 240 applications for permits to purchase in 2011 versus 170 in 2010, according to statistics from the Oakdale Police Department.

Processing the applications for both types of permits requires a background check, officials said.

The increased interest in gun ownership doesn’t bother Oakdale law enforcement officials, said Oakdale Police Department Capt. Jack Kettler, in part, because there have always been significant numbers of gun owners due to hunting.

“Firearms are very accessible in this country and always have been," he said, "and people have the right to have them."

Because police typically don’t know whether a firearm is involved when they go into a situation, he said, they’re always prepared for that possibility.

Trainer Blincow said one thing that’s changed in recent years is the types of guns people are using.

Whereas gun users once typically got started with rifles and shotguns and then moved into handguns, now it’s the other way around.

“It’s almost like it took traditional shooting and tipped it on its head,” he said.

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