Utah's concealed-weapon permits are hot sellers this year, and more than half of the permittees are from other states.

So far, 57,104 people had paid the $35 fee and applied for a permit to carry a concealed gun, and 56,370 got that permission, according to Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification figures through Aug. 31. That's up sharply from last year's 44,891 applications. During the first five years of this decade, only about 7,000 to 10,000 people applied each year.

"It's been a really crazy year for us in the last year, to say the least," the bureau's Lt. Doug Anderson told lawmakers at a Judiciary, Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Interim Committee meeting last week.

The bureau expects to process 70,000 applications next year, Anderson said. It has added eight employees this year to deal with the backlog. Currently it takes 58 days to issue each permit.

In the fiscal year that ended in June, 50.3 percent of the applicants were from outside of Utah. The Utah permit is coveted by many because it is accepted by more states -- 34 -- than any other, and because instructors in other states offer the required training. In fact, 60 percent of instructors certified by Utah are in other states.

The boom in permits reflects an uneasiness that many gun owners have with the Obama administration, said Clark Aposhian of the Utah Shooting Sports Council.

"A big component of that is the current administration's attitude toward firearms in general," Aposhian said Monday. Talk of gun registration and a possible reinstatement of the expired assault-weapons ban has put gun owners on edge, he said.

The president has publicly supported an assault weapons ban but has not taken a stand on the issue of gun registration.

Utah law prohibits the state from sharing information about its permittees with other states or federal authorities except during investigations, he said, and there is no Utah gun registry except for those weapons that federal law singles out.

There's also a potential economic element to gun and permit sales, Aposhian said. As times get tougher, people buy not just guns and ammunition but vegetable seeds and Mason jars.

"Perhaps it is because they want to make sure they can do for themselves," he said.

State Sen. Jon Greiner, R-Ogden, agreed there's a backlash against the president's perceived gun-rights views.

"There's some concerns about where the country's going," said Greiner, who also is Ogden's police chief.

"I have mixed emotions about [the increase]," he said, "but I'm a concealed-weapons proponent. If there was something that pushed people to apply, then I have no problem with that."

Permits are good for five years and cost $10 to renew. The state continually checks a criminal database to determine whether a permittee has become ineligible, and last year it suspended 495 and revoked 332. Permittees must take a training course focusing on safety and use of deadly force. The state recommends that the course should take about four hours.

As of Sept. 1, there were about 196,000 permittees, said Jason Chapman, the bureau's firearms section chief. About 116,000 of those were Utahns.

Senators at last week's committee hearing noted that Nevada recently stopped recognizing Utah's permits because the state does not require live-fire testing, and wondered whether other states will follow. That would limit the Utah permit's broad appeal.

Still, Rep. Curtis Oda, R-Clearfield, told the committee there's no safety benefit to live-fire training.

"It just is not a problem and I'm not willing to change our laws to satisfy Nevada or one or two states like that," Oda said. "We're the No. 1 permit in the country."