Just out of curiosity, without being confrontational, and following up on CE2's original post...

We know it is not required by the letter of the law, but do you consider it unreasonable for a sheriff to withhold the issuance of a permit to carry unless the applicant provides their social security number?

I don't have enough info. Yeah, I read the other thread. Is there some other way that LE can get pos. ID if there are multiple hits on a full name? I can sure see the cop's POV. He/she will be on the hot-seat if they issue a perm. to a convict. OTOH, full name, birthdate, address history, etc. should pretty much isolate an identity.

It's hard to put a finger on. Is the cop trying to be thorough, or is he/she actively "expressing" an opinion?

The Federal Govt says it is not to be used for purposes of ID. That should end the discussion.

The college I attended had, several years before my arrival there, suffered the administrative headache of having two people in the student body with the same first, middle, and last names and the same birthdate.

There are roughly 20,000 people named Robert Williams alive in the U.S. (see http://names.mongabay.com/most_common_surnames.htm; there are 1,700,000 people named Williams, 3% of the male population is named Robert; while statistically these aren't completely independent events it's still a fairly solid estimate to just multiply one by the other and divide by two for gender). Statistically, hundreds of those 20,000 share common birthdates.

So, collisions do occur.

This is complicated by the fact that the identification portion of criminal history data isn't always complete or accurate. Names may be spelled using alternate spellings or short forms (Anderson/Andersen, Larry/Lawrence), and middle names may be omitted or reduced to initials. Birthdate data may be missing or wrong.

Residence address data is unreliable and easy for applicants to falsify.

So, I do have some sympathy for the difficulties the sheriffs face in doing background checks and I can understand why they ask for SSNs at least in some cases. If I were a careful sheriff I would assume any matching records really do match if I didn't have an SSN and there was a fuzzy match on the first and last name and a matching birthdate. That would end up producing some false hits, and even going to the source documents it may not be possible to rule them out.

Minnesota doesn't require fingerprints for carry permit applications, and that's part of the problem. I'm glad we don't, but I'm willing to cut some slack to the sheriffs as a result.

I'm a landlord and I'm not going to rent you a house unless you give me your SSN (unless you don't have one), and I'm going to check it, so you can't just make up some number.

SS cards and numbers are...as we all know easy to forge/buy whatever.

I think a Sheriff should ask for any id that is reasonable to ensure he's checking the right record. The certified birth certificate won't work if the names and dob's match.

I don't believe it should be asked for on every app.

The applicant should be told the reason why they are being asked for more info.

If your the law abiding citizen that you profess to be, this shouldn't be an issue.

My 2 cents. I will concede that I trust our elected officials as wanting to do what's right...until they prove otherwise.

Is it crossing the line to require a permit ? I say yes!

Can't say yes or no, based just on the info given in this thread.

There is another 36 year old me, in Chatham IL . . . I grew up in IL. Another one 7 years older in Texas, an actor who's done an episode of Law and Order SVU, 2 episodes of Criminal intent, and 4 episodes of regular Law and Order. . .. 5 episodes of the Dana Carvey Show & some other tv as well as the movie The Interpreter, he is just 5 years my senior. There is an Artist in California who was in High School during the same years I was who also shares the name. A language arts professor and author in Hawaii .. . . . and that is just the first page of googling my own name. Then there is that deputy I mentioned in the other thread. Same name, two towns over . . was a deputy in the county I grew up in.

My name isn't all that common, though it does seem to belong to reasonably accomplished non-villians. Nevertheless, I'd like for backgound checks on me to only be about me & not roll the dice with being misidentified. The SS# is useful for that.

Given some of the negative experiences I have had with MPD, I am prone to look at cops through a harsh and suspicious lense. I am not a cop-hater, but pretty darn close . . . so when I say it doesn't look like this Sheriff in this situation is being unreasonable, it isn't because I have any love for that gang.

Oh, I think that, absent the law as it is, it's a perfectly reasonable request. But I think that where the law says that no further information is to be requested or demanded, then the sheriff really shouldn't be requesting or demanding further information.

Whether this is where somebody wants to put a stake in the ground and say, "here I stand," isn't up to me.

But it's still wrong.

I personally don't object to providing my SSN on a permit app or firearm purchase form. I think there's little risk of identity theft, and that would be my main concern. I could provide a passport number. Maybe that would be better and safer all around.

I agree with all that but if it were me, I'd pick a fight with the sheriff over something else.

People get so wound up over social security numbers; it's something I've had to deal with (or know ohters that have dealt with it) for years.

When I sold cell phones as part of my job, people would fill out the application for the service agreement. When it got to the portion that asked for their social security number, they would refuse to sign (*It was not voluntary).

One customer went back and forth with me insisting that I put the application through without the SSN. After about an hour, I finally said "I can't do that. I couldn't do it fifteen minutes ago, I won't be able to do it in another hour, I won't be able to do it tomorrow or in a week. They will not process your application without a social security number."

Bear in mind that part of the application/service agreement required a credit check.

At the casino where I work, guests sometimes refuse to give their social security number to the employees paying their taxable jackpots. That argument has gone all the way up to casino management.

They either cough up the information or they don't get the jackpot. Simple as that. Bear in mind in this case that the SSN is required for income tax withholding.

Do I like the idea of being tracked? No.

But I'm taking a tack based in reality. Ever post you make to TC Carry, or The High Road, or any other pro gun web board; every time you buy a gun and the 4473 is called in to the feds; every time you use certain key words on the phone ("gun", "ammo", "Commie", "Obama", "Obama's a Commie", etc... ) you're being observed, scrutinized, evaluated.

You can call me paranoid, you can call me part of the tinfoil hat brigade, but I'm pretty sure if the local cops want to know if you've got a permit to carry, they'll be able to find out pretty easily. Ditto for the Feds.

Sure. Those are two related, albeit different, issues: 1. is the sheriff in the wrong? 2. is it worth going to court about?

A point that I missed the first time I skimmed over this thread, and a good one.

I'd fight it.

Every time a sheriff breaks the law and successfully bullies an applicant into providing information that the sheriff isn't allowed to ask for, it emboldens him and his fellow sheriffs toward further infringements.

I myself don't think it should be asked or required on a regular basis. If they do the background check and something came up to disqualify you then they would have a reason to make sure it is not another person with your name and use your ssn as another form of identity.