NW Illinois News

Illinois gun owners are fed up with the delays in receiving their Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card and at least one lawmaker has picked up on that frustration. 

The Chicago Sun-Times reported in March that the state's already sluggish response time to FOID card requests was made even worse by the onset of the pandemic, the lockdown and months of civil unrest; the number of FOID applications has nearly tripled in approximately a year's time, resulting in Illinois gun owners waiting up to 10 months for their place in the queue to be reached, according to Prairie State Wire. State Sen. Neil Anderson (R-Moline) called the FOID card "a blatant assault on people's Second Amendment rights."

"[The FOID card] is simply a cash grab for the state," Anderson said in an April 15 video from the Illinois Senate Republican Caucus. He described the FOID card as redundant and a hypocrisy for responsible gun owners since the purchase of a firearm already requires an instant federal background check.

According to Anderson, the FOID card bureaucratic process is being funded by money funneled away from the state police department, which is a reason to "point the finger at the majority party."

"Tell [Democrats] to stop stripping funds away from state police and let them do their job," Anderson said. 

Last month Anderson introduced Senate Bill 1754 which would revoke the 1968 FOID Act that established the need for the cards. According to a March 8 article from Rock Island Today, SB 1754 would retain other requirements for purchasing a firearm, including strict federal background checks, while abolishing the FOID cards. 

Anderson said that other bills currently in the legislature, including those that would cut the time a FOID card is valid before renewal in half and double the renewal fees, are just going to make the card system's issues worse.

"It's not fixing the root problem," he said.