DELAYS SEEN IN ISSUING ILLINOIS FOID CARDS
If you have waited more than 60 days to receive your FOID card from the state, you are not alone. Issuing Firearm Owner's Identification cards are now taking more than 60 days.
More than 70,000 FOID card applications have been received in March, putting it on track to being the record month so far for the program.
Every month since December, has seen a record number of Illinois residents applying for FOID cards. Officials say 31,249 applications were received in December. In January 61,172 people applied for a card and there were 56,078 applications in February. State officials noted that at the end of January the backlog on processing FOID cards was more than 70,000. Total FOID applications for all of last year were 338,610.
The high demand is clearly tied to concerns that the public has with Washington and Springfield pushing legislation that may make it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to own a firearm.
The FOID card was created in 1968 as a method to identify Illinois residents eligible to purchase guns and ammunition. 1.5 million State residents have a FOID card.
RIGHT-TO-CARRY AND GUN CONTROL
While there is a lot of hearings and discussions to date, no significant legislation has been advanced to address either a citizen's right to carry firearms or to restrict the sale of weapons or high-capacity magazines. As the only state in the nation that denies citizens the right to carry firearms in public, Illinois remains under a federal court order to adopt legislation by this spring.
I continue to support Right- to-Carry and my legislative preference would be to mirror a program similar to Utah's.