There may be situations where that’s appropriate (e.g. a pending trial for a violent crime, or pending results of a court-ordered psych exam for someone found living under a bridge sitting in pools of their own urine screaming irrational threats), but it certainly shouldn’t be up to an individual sheriff to decide.
Judges should be handling this on an individual basis, as they review the evidence in cases brought before them, and the specific reason for decisions need to be a matter of formal court records, so they can be appealed. If there’s no pending court action, and a sheriff has serious concerns about an applicant (not that I think there should even BE an application process, mind you), the sheriff should be required to promptly petition the court for permission to deny, pending further court action, and submit accompanying affidavits and/or concrete evidence, to support the petition, just as when a law enforcement agency seeks a search warrant.
Any abrogation of rights must be on an individually adjudicated basis, just as with imprisonment. No blanket abrogation of rights of categories of people, and certainly not categories defined by “Sheriff So-and-so doesn’t think these people should have carry permits”.
In the sheriff’s defense, it’s a huge problem in this country that many people who everyone knows committed one or more violent crimes are routinely allowed to “plea bargain” down to a lesser, non-felony offense. This is mainly the result of ludicrous standards of evidence (i.e. garbage like “wasn’t read his Miranda rights in a language he’s fluent in”). The result is that people who are flatly known to have violent criminal histories have no documented judicial record of this. The sheriffs aren’t responsible for this sad state of affairs, and are put in a really difficult position if they’re forced by law to sign off on a carry permit for someone they know has committed one or more serious violent crimes (in some cases very recently).
Example: the child rapist in Maryland who kept claiming he was only fluent in some obscure African dialect, and was let off scot-free by a judge who claimed she couldn’t find an interpreter with which to give him a fair trial. I’d have plenty of sympathy for a sheriff who was protesting that he shouldn’t be forced to sign a carry permit for this guy. That fact that he doesn’t have a “conviction” is frankly irrelevant. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/21/AR2007072100660_pf.html
Story County Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald said explaining why a permit is denied could interfere with criminal investigations. "Taking the discretion away from sheriffs who have the intimate knowledge is going to be a disservice to the people in those communities," Fitzgerald says. Fitzgerald says the responsibility has got to fall back into the the sheriff and the sheriff has to stand up on why he did not give the person a permit.
I see a solution here. The Sheriff can deny issue of any perceived defect (social, psychological, or criminal) provided he states the reason in a manner that makes him liable to a libel lawsuit.
{OK on second thoughts, the US will have to bring in tort reform for that to work - darn those unintended consquences)