Just when you thought the statewide budget cuts couldn't get any worse, apparently, thanks to the slashing and burning going on in Albany, your neighbor may be going to sleep tonight without a loaded gun in the nightstand.

According to a release issued by the Niagara County Public Information office, more than 100 pistol permits filed in Niagara County are backlogged due to staffing cuts resulting from Gov. Andrew Cuomo's recent budget.

In a nutshell (nut being the operative word here) before your crazy Uncle Charlie can get his hands on some deadly firepower the state wants to do its homework and make sure Charlie hasn't spent any time institutionalized. Seems like a good idea to me.

Apparently, according to Niagara County Clerk Wayne Jagow, the lack of employees conducting these checks (the budget cut three of the four people who work to run checks and issue the permits) has created a bottleneck statewide with thousands of applications still unprocessed.

This, says Jagow, is "unconscionable" and he sees the delays as a violation of the Second Amendment.

"No failure of this nature should leave any citizen, or their families, exposed and in danger," he says.

With all due respect to Mr. Jagow, as someone who both believes in the Constitution and certainly the Second Amendment, it seems to me to be a bit of a stretch to suggest people could die because they are unable to "quickly obtain a pistol or revolver."

Why would one need to "quickly" obtain a gun? If you prefer to have a gun for safety, you would have a gun by now. If you decide you would like one, you'll get one as soon as the application is processed. To suggest that in the lag time people are going to be vulnerable to attack and at the mercy of some roving band of home invaders seems over the top. When last I saw a gun being used by a homeowner to protect his family, it was used to shoot and kill an unarmed school teacher.

If you are a regular viewer of the evening news, or you read the daily paper, I would challenge you to count the number of home invasions in Western New York in the past year. It is an incredibly rare crime. Of those few unfortunate families that have been victimized, statistically, a good percentage of them would have no interest in owning a gun.

Of those that remain, the statistical odds someone is going to be harmed by an individual breaking into their home and the owner being without a gun because he filed a permit and is waiting for approval is incredibly slim. While Jagow and company are beating the drum hard, as budget cuts go, this isn't an end-of-the-world catastrophic problem.

Gun owners are a passionate group, and I understand and appreciate their desire to exercise their constitutional right to own a firearm. However, if we want to talk about protecting your family, odds are you and your family face a far greater risk if they start pushing through permits and giving guns to crazy people, then you are if the process takes longer, people are properly vetted, and you wait a bit for your gun.