ILLINOIS—There are plenty of things wrong with the story coming out of the Pantagraph in Springfield this morning, despite the hopefulness many feel about it.
The bottom line is this: Illinois is not getting “Constitutional Carry,” which equates to any person being allowed to carry any weapon, loaded if they so choose, on their person at any time, concealed or open, unlegislated including ‘permits’ for this that or the other thing. That’s “the right to bear arms,” and it’s not supposed to be abridged by anyone, according to the Second Amendment. Yet Illinois has been abridging it in more intrusive and oppressive ways for well over 30 years now, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change any time soon.
Will we, or won’t we, have permits?
Instead, an Illinois Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that state’s draconian gun laws are unconstitutional and that we should at least be allowed to carry concealed weapons on us was handed down last December, and the court gave the state until June 9 to make it so.
So the state has been scrambling to ensure they’re going to be on the receiving end of any expensive permitting process they can devise. Except no legislator has been able to devise something that’s passable.
Nevertheless, this week, ISP received computer and other equipment valued in the range of $175,000 as part of a “no-bid contract” undertaken on an “emergency basis” (way to go, Pat Quinn; get your buddies in on that “emergency basis” thing) so they could “get the permit process underway.”
Of course, if the legislators don’t meet the June 9 deadline, there may not BE a “permit process.”
It’s completely up in the air what’s going to happen if legislators don’t meet the deadline. We the people simply don’t know. And of course, those of us with common sense are concerned that we’re going to be carrying concealed—like we should be be allowed to do—and if the “rules” aren’t laid out via legislation, and then there’ll be the errant idiot—like Cook County’s Sheriff Thomas Dart—who’ll try to pass his own county ordinance regulating concealed carry as it pertains to permits, and the “law” will change from jurisdiction to jurisdiction…which endangers law-abiding citizens who travel and wish to carry, as they can’t be expected to know every little “law” of every little burg they go into, and might violate a law with one foot in one jurisdiction and the other in another.
This stupidity has to stop. Call or email your legislators, and indeed the legislators throughout the state, and tell them we the people demand the simplest of concealed carry anyone can think of. Doing away with FOID would be a good start: let those who currently have a FOID card be issued a permit immediately, from the state’s database and without any further “classes” or application process, as they’ve already been through ISP’s background check process. Then make it simple from there. The state doesn’t need $175,000 worth of equipment; they’ve already got FOID equipment in place; a few clicks of the mouse and the name of the process is changed. Otherwise, if you have a good idea on streamlining this, tell it to your legislators; and post it here. We’d like to hear it, too.