I talked to multiple people that didn't do it the electronic way last year and it took a couple weeks, not 3 months.
We do several permits a day, that is not the norm and was not the norm for the previous 13 years either. If they were renewals, they may have been processed faster (see below). In recent years the process with which applications were processed has changed. The applicants criminal history use to be run at the local level and as long as there were no felony convictions (and the Chief or Sheriff signed off on it) the process continued forward and the application was either sent downstate with a fingerprint card by the agency or provided to the applicant and they were instructed to send downstate.
Now, the entire application is sent downstate where they check the criminal history of the applicant and submit fingerprints for a search. The fingerprint search is now processed as a full history search, where previous renewals were only searched against new records since the last approved application date. That is why they asked for you previous LTCH number and date.....although they still ask it is no longer a necessity since they are now running full searches on every application.
Positive responses and unreadable print cards are set aside for manual inspection and either rejected or approved depending on if a person can inspect the prints rather than scanned and/or the applicant is the result of a false positive Soundex (Basically your name, Date of Birth, or other identifier is similar to a convicted felon, wanted person, etc).
Every hiccup causes the process to slow slightly and with the massive increase in applications these issues begin to create a backlog....it is the classic case of Lucy at the chocolate factory.
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