QUOTE (Ravor @ Feb 4 2008, 02:03 AM)

Personally I'm in favor of leaving the various permits rather open, for example, a weapons permit allows you to carry whatever legal weapon that you want to carry (Otherwise the crowd scenes where it seems almost everyone is packing makes little sense.), and a character only needs one cyberware license for each SIN provided that it gets updated for each implant.
It is fairly common in Texas, when there is a public robbery, like a restaurant or the like, for some random guy to pull out a piece and shoot the suspects. We have rather loose Concealed & Carry laws. In fact in another game there is a rule that if you start a firefight in Austin there is a chance that 2d6 -2 good ol' boys will start firing as well. I got my first gun as a present on my tenth birthday. I still have 8mm of my 5 year old mother firing an old .22 rifle. Firearms are, have always been and will always be a part of the American landscape.
That being said, as a 20 something male, if I am caught with a firearm on the streets, I will go to jail. Period. I may not stay there and the charges may not stick according to my permit, but law enforcement would rather be safe than sorry and would just as soon taught my gun carrying butt to jail as look at me, legal arrest or no.
A 40-something, SINed human could walk away from a Lone Star officer with a licensed permit on a 22R firearm with a decent Charisma roll, but a poorly dressed troll in the wrong part of town in the middle of the night without a SIN is going to be handcuffed, taken into a ditch and shot.
There is law in the Sixth World, but there is no justice. Only money and power make any difference and you should adjust the rules of your game accordingly. If your SINless troll of the party gets caught by the Star and the elf shaman can't bail him out, just find a way to make it worth the officer's while to let them go. Think more "The Shield" and less "Law & Order"