I’m Lance Rankin, a Texas FFL and gunsmith at Western Sport in Roanoke. Every so often a story comes across my desk that makes me grateful for the state I do business in. Santa Clara County, California has managed to make exercising a constitutional right cost about as much as a decent used pistol safe, and a lawsuit is asking the obvious question: how is this legal? As always with litigation, this is dated commentary; check the case’s current status before relying on it.
The $2,000 itemized bill
Here’s what a carry permit applicant in Santa Clara County reportedly faces: a $976 application fee, a $500 mandatory psychological evaluation, a $400 training course, plus fingerprinting. Total: roughly $2,000. The permit lasts two years. Renewal runs about $850 and requires an eight-hour recertification course. Every two years. Forever.
The psych exam is the part that stands out. California law lets a sheriff order a psychological evaluation when something in a specific applicant’s record raises a genuine question of mental fitness. Santa Clara made it universal: every applicant, no individualized reason required, pass or fail at the county’s discretion. As of this writing, no other California county does that.
The lawsuit
The challenge, filed as Blank v. Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department, makes two arguments. First, the fees are a wealth qualification: a $2,000 entry price doesn’t regulate carry, it reserves carry for people with disposable income. Courts killed poll taxes on exactly that logic. Run the comparison against any other right and the absurdity is immediate. A $976 fee and a psychological screening to vote, or to speak at a city council meeting, wouldn’t survive a week in court.
Second, the universal psych exam quietly rebuilds what the Supreme Court tore down in Bruen in 2022. Bruen ended subjective, discretionary tests like “good cause,” where an official decided whose reasons for carrying were good enough. An exam that every applicant must pass at the county’s discretion is a subjective gate with a clinical coat of paint. Same discretion, new paperwork.
The tell: other counties
If $2,000 reflected the real cost of processing a permit, other California counties would charge something like it. They don’t. Sacramento County charges about $48 for an initial application. San Diego and Los Angeles, hardly gun-friendly jurisdictions, charge far less than Santa Clara and require no psychological exam. When one county’s price is forty times its neighbor’s, that’s not cost recovery. That’s a message to applicants: don’t bother.
The suit is part of the California Rifle and Pistol Association’s “CCW Reckoning Project,” a county-by-county effort to force compliance with Bruen. A win here would echo well beyond Santa Clara, because plenty of reluctant jurisdictions nationwide are testing how much friction they can add before a court calls it what it is.
The view from Texas
For contrast: a Texas License to Carry costs $40 in state fees plus a modest class, and thanks to constitutional carry most law-abiding Texans don’t need a permit at all. I still recommend the LTC for the training, the reciprocity, and the smoother purchases, and my guide covers the whole process. Rights shouldn’t have a price of admission, and out here they mostly don’t.
If you’re in North Texas and ready to exercise yours, start with how to buy a gun in Texas or my carry gun guides, then come see me. Local pickup by appointment in Roanoke, north of Fort Worth. [email protected] or 817-393-4000.
Lance Rankin is the owner and Chief Gunsmith of Western Sport, a family-run Type 07 FFL and Class 3/SOT dealer in Roanoke, Texas, serving shooters since 2007. Born and raised in Texas with over 50 years of experience handling firearms, Lance purchased Western Sport in 2017 and turned his lifelong passion into his profession. He specializes in AR-15 and AR-10 platform rifles, manufactures Western Sport’s own AR-15 line under the Rankin Industries brand, and runs the shop’s in-house Cerakote coating operation. When he’s not behind the counter or the workbench, you’ll find him on his ranch deep into the night, hunting coyotes with an AR-15 and thermal optics. Lance holds an MBA and personally shoots and tests the products Western Sport sells.
