The proposal is viewed as one of the least offensive, restrictive ways we can improve and maintain the "quality" of the Utah permit.
Nevada and New Mexico have recently dropped recognition of the Utah permit. Officially it was over lack of live fire or other training requirements. Unofficially, both the States and instructors for their permits were miffed over losing revenue to the Utah permit and instructors for the Utah permit.
Arizona had similar concerns a few years ago and fortunately took a different tact: Arizona will not recognize any non-Arizona permit held by an Arizona resident. If you are Arizona resident and want the benefits of a permit (much reduced now with permit free constitutional carry, but that is beside the point), you will need to get an Arizona permit.
Texas is now having similar discussions relative to the Utah permit. Fortunately, they are looking at the Arizona solution rather than the Nevada/New Mexico solution. Texas is unique in that they are being quite open about admitting it is about lost revenue for both the State and instructors of the Texas permit.
Utah is becoming a victim of our own success. Our permits are not expensive. The required training is what we and most other States consider most crucial--the legal elements of use of deadly force--without imposing needless time, costs, or other constraints on applicants. And it is one of the most widely accepted permits in the nation. It is an easy sell. An every time some instructor goes into a place like Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, etc and starts telling prospective customers that they don't need to get a home State permit, they can just get a Utah permit instead, he creates a financial incentive for the local instructors to start lobbying to deny recognition of the Utah permit.
Ideally, we wouldn't need permits to exercise our rights. But so long as we do, it is much to our advantage to have as widespread recognition as possible so we don't require 40 different permits to move around the country.
So, how to protect the utah permit? It would be nice if States concerned about revenue would simply be honest as Texas has and adopt the Arizona/Texas model of requiring their own citizens to get resident permits while still recognizing out-of-State permits held by non-residents. But I can't much influence what 20 other State legislatures do.
What I can do is influence what the Utah legislature does. We could raise our permit fees until we were not undercutting other States. We could increase training and paperwork requirements until we had the most restrictive permit in the nation. I think we all agree both of those "solutions" are non-starters.
So the idea is to address both the financial and most of the training concerns by requiring non-Utah-residents in shall issue States to have a valid home-State permit before they can get a Utah permit. We no longer undercut other permits since people are required to get their home-State permit first. Even most training concerns go away as residents are required to pass all home-State permit requirements before getting a Utah permit. The rare Utahn who visits is a statistical rarity.
This also creates a bit of an incentive for residents of other States to be involved with their legislatures to improve their own permit processes rather than just taking a free ride on Utah permits.
The other alternatives include doing nothing and watching as we lose recognition in additional States and have a harder time gaining recognition in some States. Some have talked about ending the issuance of Utah permits to non-Utah-residents entirely. Others have suggested that we require non-Utah-residents to come to Utah to take our class, or require that only Utah residents be permitted to be instructors for the Utah permit.
I believe that requiring non-Utah-residents in shall issue States to get their home-State permit before getting a Utah permit is the least onerous, and most likely beneficial thing we can reasonably do.
I expect some will disagree. But I hope all will think carefully about the various alternatives before too heavily condemning this one.
Charles
