Some 8,450 Clark County residents -- about 14,000 Nevadans, statewide -- have gone through the onerous process of acquiring a concealed firearms permit.

It's not easy or cheap. You have to take a $100 class, pass a written safety exam, demonstrate safe gun handling and marksmanship at a shooting range, submit to fingerprinting and being "mug-shotted" like a common criminal, pay the state another $105, and then wait three months for an FBI criminal background check.

To induce us mostly well-behaved old geezers to participate in this dangerous scam, the organizers offered us a few minimal benefits. While Nevadans without such permits have to pay $25 to have an FBI criminal background check run each time they purchase a firearm, serious gun owners and shooters were told that as a fringe benefit of acquiring the concealed carry permit we'd be allowed to buy firearms without undergoing (and paying for) a new $25 "Brady" check each time.

Guess what?

In an Oct. 13 letter, Maj. Robert Wideman of the division of the Nevada Department of Public Safety (state police) advises Nevada gun dealers that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has determined that will no longer be the case beginning Oct. 23.

What will be the impact of this change, pulled off on a mere 10 days' notice, without any chance for public input?

"We're not going to sell as many guns," says Rance Spurlock of Spurlock's Gun Shop in Henderson, a mostly hunting oriented shop. "I'd venture to say our gun sales are a 50-50 mix," between CCW holders and those without permits. "That's the main reason a lot of guys got the CCW, is the volume of guns they buy."

Where did this all come from?

"The bottom line is, not all the jurisdictions that issue CCWs conduct a background check ... that's required by law," Mary Lerch, director of industry operations for the San Francisco field division of the BATFE, told me Wednesday.

Neither she nor Wideman would tell me which Nevada county sheriffs have allegedly been handing out the permits without running the required background checks.

Ms. Lerch said there's also a problem with the fact Nevada's CCWs are good for five years. "That could be an issue. Someone could become a prohibited person (by being convicted of a felony) during the 5-year period."

Ms. Lerch could not name me a single case where someone with a Nevada CCW which had become invalid has used it to escape a background check.

Nor does all this rigmarole stop real felons from acquiring guns, of course.

Twenty-six-year-old Charles Walker, who recently withdrew his guilty plea, previously admitted to shooting good Samaritan tourist Thomas Latimer to death during an armed robbery at a Las Vegas McDonald's last January. Walker had just been released from a federal prison for bank robbery at the time of the slaying. "Prohibited persons" have no trouble acquiring guns on the street; they do not pay for $25 background checks.

Nevada's sheriffs agreed not to fight this change, explains Lt. Paul Howell of the Douglas County Sheriff's Office, who chairs the CCW subcommittee of the Nevada Sheriff & Chiefs Association, because the only way to please the BATFE would be to issue annual permits, or perform random annual audits of 50 to 70 percent of permit holders, which would be prohibitively expensive for the short-staffed rural counties.

The bottom line? Once again, gun owners, realizing that nations remain free (and states and counties retain low crime rates) only so long as a significant portion of the civilian population remains armed, and rather than be accused of disobeying the law, have reluctantly entered into a registration and permitting process under laws they know to be null void under the great precedent of Marbury v. Madison.

To encourage us to participate in this scheme, which converts a God-given and constitutionally guaranteed right into a conditional privilege, revocable at government whim -- and additionally helps the government to identify and track the minority who still exercise this vital right -- we fools were promised certain minimal advantages and cost-saving "exemptions."

Then, as soon as we're all safely ensnared in the system -- fingerprinted, mug-shotted, registered by Social Security number and home address -- they begin tightening the screws, gradually eliminating even those minimal "advantages and exemptions" which were offered us as an inducement to stick our heads in the noose.

The practical impact? All firearm purchases will now be more time-consuming, more expensive, and less convenient. Overall, gun sales and gun ownership levels will drop yet again. A few more gun shops will give up their licenses and disappear, as has been the stated goal of the ATF for decades.

The long-term goal? Our complete disarmament.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of "Send in the Waco Killers" and the new novel "The Black Arrow." His Web sites are www.TheLibertarian.us or www.LibertyBookShop.us.