Illinois to be overwhelmed by 400,000 concealed carry applicants

I’m sure that the Illinois government will handle the state’s new concealed carry permitting process with efficiency and competency.

Aren’t you?

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The issue of gun permits surfaced briefly in the Illinois governor’s race, when a candidate claimed that the Illinois State Police had a backlog of 75,000 gun-owner’s ID applications under Gov. Pat Quinn, forcing hunters to miss entire hunting seasons.

The real number isn’t that high — just 49,000, according to state police. But those numbers belie a bigger headache awaiting the state’s bureaucracy now that lawmakers have set in motion a process to facilitate the carrying of concealed weapons in public, as mandated by a federal court order.

Whereas a few years ago, 1.2 million Illinoisans held Firearm Owners Identification cards, the number has jumped to 1.6 million, state police spokeswoman Monique Bond said. Soon after the court decreed in December that Illinois couldn’t ban public carry anymore, demand for FOID cards jumped precipitously. In January alone, Bond reported, there were 61,000 FOID applications, nearly double the 31,000 in January 2012.

Once the state’s new concealed-carry law is fully in place, state police officials expect 400,000 applications in the first year for the $150 “carry” permits, a number on top of the 49,000 waiting for a $10 FOID which gives them permission to own a gun — permission that’s unique among states.

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Taken together with a recent Illinois Supreme Court ruling that seems to suggest a belief in Constitutional carry (allowing the carry of a gun  without a permit), and it could get interesting  in the criminal justice system as citizens, police, and the courts come to grips with new gun laws and court decisions.

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