The Mountain West Firearms Podcast

Shortage of Concealed Carry Handgun Training

• Ken Carroll

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In this episode of Mountain West Firearms Podcast, host Robert Wareham takes listeners deep into the ongoing bureaucratic gridlock that’s halted new concealed carry handgun instructor certifications in North Carolina. From his academy setup at Mountain West Firearms, Robert explains how his team has been ready to offer state-mandated concealed carry training—but has been blocked by a state-level dispute between two commissions: the Commission for Judicial Education and Training Standards (CJETS) and the North Carolina Rules Review Commission.

Robert breaks down how a seemingly routine administrative update in early 2024 spiraled into a statewide problem. When CJETS updated its instructor certification rules, the Rules Review Commission repealed the old ones but refused to approve the new set—arguing the legislature only authorized “guidelines,” not “rules.” The result? No legal framework now exists for approving new instructors, leaving firearm educators like Robert unable to train the next generation of responsible concealed carriers.

The podcast also explores the political undercurrents behind the issue, as Robert shares his frustration with the lack of response from state lawmakers. He raises the concern that partisan politics may be quietly stalling gun training accessibility, effectively restricting citizens’ ability to obtain concealed carry permits. Despite the legal stalemate, Robert shares how Mountain West Firearms is partnering with a currently certified instructor to offer limited classes until the state resolves the issue.

Packed with firsthand insight, legislative context, and a dose of frustration, this episode sheds light on how administrative red tape can have real-world consequences for Second Amendment rights, firearm education, and lawful gun ownership across North Carolina.

Introduction:

You're tuned in to the Mountain West Firearms Podcast, where honest talk and expert insight meet the world of shooting, training, and responsible firearm ownership. Let's dive in.

Robert Wareham:

Hi everyone, Robert Wareham again from Mountain West Firearms with another podcast dealing with the world of firearms, self-protection, Second Amendment rights, things like that. Well, one of the things you may have noticed if you've been coming by the store is that we've got a nice academy area set up. It's got audiovisual equipment, it's got nice comfortable chairs and tables. And that's because we intended to offer concealed handgun permit training, along with a myriad other types of training courses, but principally the one that people have been asking for is the state-mandated training to get your concealed carry handgun permit. Before you can even go in and get fingerprinted by the sheriff and submit your application, you have to have a certificate that you've completed the state certified course. Now that may seem like a simple deal, and for many years it was. For many years you had people go down, they contacted the Commission for Judicial Education and Training Standards, otherwise known as CJETS, and they set up the rules and regulations for a lot of different things. Everything dealing from training of law enforcement officers and their standards to police academies and the like. This is just one little subsection of everything that CJETS does, and that is, they've been certifying for years both the curriculum and the instructors to offer the state mandated concealed carry handgun course. So then you say, well, why is this a topic of a podcast? Well, it's a topic of a podcast because right now it's impossible to get a new instructor uh instructor certification out of CJETS. And you might ask yourself, well, why? Well, they're renewing existing instructor licenses if their certification has uh lapsed, but they're refusing to accept applications for new uh instructor certifications. And this dates back to early 2024. CJTS was going through a review of their rules and regulations, and they decided to update some of those rules and regulations that had been on the books, frankly, for years and had been worked by the Commission, and they'd been working very successfully in the community to provide uh certification to these concealed can handgun um concealed carry handgun instructors. So uh in the process of going through this, I think I won't get into all the details of what they were changing, but they were primarily just administrative type changes to add, you know, maybe USCA courses that could count coordinate or NRA courses and things like that, and really just sort of ministerial types of corrections uh and additions onto these rules. And these rules are contained in the North Carolina Administrative Code. And what happens in the legislative process is this the rather than the General Assembly getting deep into the details and nitty-gritty about how an instructor should be accredited and things like that, when they pass the law that requires accreditation, they uh charge the agency in charge of it with uh the giving them a mandate basically to go ahead and establish rules. Now, in this case, the statute used the word guidelines, and I think that's where things are hung up right now. So it said the CJETs should establish guidelines for the for the courses and for the instructor accreditation. And so that's what they've done, and they've practiced under that for several years. So what happens is these uh guidelines or rules get published in the North Carolina Administrative Code, and we have a separate commission in North Carolina that is called the North Carolina uh Rules uh Review Committee Commission. And what their job is is to take proposed rules from other state agencies that uh are to be included now in the administrative code in fulfillment of their statutory obligations, and they're to take these rules and uh submit them to this uh rules review commission, and the rules review commission then codifies them. And in fact, here in North Carolina we actually have uh a position called the codifier of rules. This is an individual who takes and works with this uh Rules Review Commission and then organizes all of these rules into some sort of uh uh fashion that makes sense so that they can be referred to by the public and by the courts and by anyone who relies on on this information. So back to what happened in in early 2024. In early 2024, the uh CJETs, the Commission on Judicial Education and Training Standards, reviewed their existing rules, which had been on the books for years, decided to make some changes, published what they considered considered to be draft new rules, and then complying with the state requirement, they sent these over um to the Commission on Rules Review, rules and regulation review. And they arrive over there at this other commission, and this other commission proceeds to review uh everything, and they repeal the existing rules that exist on the book for certifying new concealed handgun permit uh instructors and the curriculum, the courseware that goes along with it. But then when they go to look at adopting the new rules, they go back to the statute and they look at it and they go, well, the legislature didn't really say that this uh CJTs had the authority to issue rules and regulations. It used that, shall we say, more vague word of publishing guidance on all of this. And so what the codifier of rules did is the codifier of rules repealed the old regulations that had the framework for accepting new applications for instructor certification and certifying courseware and things like that. They went ahead and repealed those, but then they refused to publish or issue or codify the new rules, leaving this blank page that the CJETs people look at and say, well, now we don't have any authority. We don't have any rules in place upon which we could do this. So the battle went back and forth. And keep in mind here, these are two separate commissions within state government. It's not like these are outside organizations. These the the um both of these organizations are basically under the Attorney General and the Department of Law. So you might think, isn't somebody going to take control here and go in and fix this problem? Well, no, they're not. Nobody seems to care about it. And I have a concern that because we have Democrats in the uh governor's office and Democrats in the Attorney General's office that they look at it and go, oh, well, this just means that people can't get training to key to carry their concealed handgun, which we're kind of opposed to people carrying guns anyway, so who cares if they can't get trained to do this? It's kind of a subliminal behind-the-scenes way of going, hey, all right, we don't have to facilitate this training, and if we don't facilitate this training, people can't get trained. And if people can't get trained, they can't get their concealed carry handgun permit. And if they can't get their permit, the assumption is, well, they won't carry concealed. And that kind of fits in real well with the politics of some people on the left. And you know, that suspicion was sort of underscored when I reached out to two local lawmakers, because again, we're going back to what the statute says. And the statute basically just uses a word that the codifier of rules doesn't think is strong enough to give CJETs the authority to adopt rules. The statute says guidance. It doesn't say shall public rule publish rules and regulations. Well, that would be easily fixed by a legislature. So I thought, well, I'll write a letter to my local lawmakers. So I wrote a letter to my local uh assembly person. I wrote a letter to my local state senator and said, hey, we've got a problem here. Would one of you address this through legislation? It's a simple matter of going in, amending the statute, and getting rid of the word guidance, and then expressly authorizing um CJs to publish new rules uh for both certification of instructors and for certification of courseware. Well, that was over a month ago, and I have heard nothing back from either of those lawmakers. Coincidentally, both of those lawmakers are also Democrats. And so, you know, I'm starting to get a little bit of uh paranoia that maybe this is all part of the divine plan. So what happened eventually is the Commission on uh criminal justice education and training standards sued the Commission on Rules. So now you have two state agencies using judicial resources, using the Attorney General's office, where I don't know how he's doing it, the Attorney General is r representing both of these commissions, and they're suing each other to get an injunction. Well, Seagets, in their uh lawsuit, the local district court judge in Wake County over in Raleigh came back and ruled against Sea Jet Jets and ruled in favor of the Commission uh on rules, and said, nope, the commission's right, so you can't do this, and so just left the impasse in place. Now you might think, well, that would be the end of it, right? Well, when I reached out to the Attorney General's office and to Seagets, uh I actually got a very prompt response. I was impressed by that. It was came from Seagets, and it came from an attorney general that was assigned to this case. And this attorney general, deputy attorney general, sent me back just a brief email saying, look, here's what's going on. Here's a copy of the pleadings, and that's where I basically got all of this knowledge as to what was going on. And I read it, and interestingly enough, uh later in the day I got a phone call. And the phone call was someone who purported to be with uh Seagets and didn't really want to be uh disclosed or or uh made public, but shared with me a little more background information. And I'm gonna consider that almost like a confidential source. But this individual told me that uh my hunch was right. This can easily be fixed by the legislature and by the governor signing uh a bill to amend this statute. But in essence, it's stuck right there. But they also pointed out to me that the Commission on Rules basically took the same position with the North Carolina Coastal Commission. You know, the Coastal Commission is down along the uh seaboard, and they issue rules down there for, you know, coastal use, environmental, and regulations and things like that. And they ran into the same problem with the uh Rules Commission. And they also went to court in a different county down there along the coast, sued the Rules Commission, and wouldn't you know it ended up with the exact opposite result. So now what do you have? You have two commissions in a fight with this commission on rules, and on one part of the state, a state court judge has said, we're gonna back the commission on rules, and another part of the state, a judge has said, no, the Coastal Commission is right, the Commission on Rules is wrong. Facts are the same, statutes are very similar, and it's just a loggerhead between state agencies. So this is what's going on, and it's it's very frustrating because we have people coming into the store at Mountain West Firearms every day saying, When are you going to be able to offer concealed carry handgun courses? And we say we'd love to offer courses, but we need to be able to get certified. I'm perfectly qualified to teach a course in concealed carry handguns. But I can't do it because they won't accept my application. And again, I've reached out to our lawmakers. Crickets, nothing back from our lawmakers. So it's hard to know what's going to go on here. I know that uh there is a state association of concealed carry handgun instructors and and they are working on it, they are pressuring. But until we get our elected lawmakers, all of whom tend to come from the anti-gun side of uh the political spectrum, to step forward and say, hey, you know, carrying a firearm is a right. And there are those who argue that carrying a firearm even concealed uh ought to be a constitutional right and shouldn't require a permit. But at the very least, if you're going to require a permit as the state, the least you can do, and and and associated with that permit is certain levels of training and certification, then it is incumbent upon the state to make sure that that training is available uh frequently and economically to anyone who wants it. Now, we have been successful uh in uh recent weeks in identifying a uh gentleman who has uh current certification, and uh we have reached an agreement with him that he is going to come up and teach the courses on our behalf, and uh. I will assist him in doing so. So that's how we're temporarily addressing the problem. But I wanted to share with you here through this podcast what the challenges are that we've been facing. We've been opened down at the store since uh early June, and uh. It uh certainly would have uh improved our uh financial situation to be able to do so, and uh it certainly would have made it possible for many more people to go ahead and proceed and get their concealed carry permits. But uh we're gonna be starting that um in the near future. We'll get a courses going because this individual has to travel. We're probably only gonna be able to do one course a month to get started, but we will be offering that. But if you have the opportunity and you run into any of our state-elected lawmakers, you know, just mention to them you've got to get it straightened out. There is a real problem within the state in getting certification for new concealed carry handgun instructors, and that's affecting not just uh our retail and educational training operations at Mountain West Firearms, it's affecting the ability and the availability of training for you, the law-abiding firearms carrier. That's all I've got for today. Um, and we'll talk to you next time.

Introduction:

Thanks for listening to the Mountain West Firearms Podcast, where skill meets responsibility. Subscribe for straight talk and expert insight, and we'll see you on the next one.