Update 9/16 talks with state police

[Tvandermyde]

Been an interesting week.

 

The State Police are less talkative these days as are most people in the administration. What has become clear is that they didn’t want to be responsible for implementing the carry law.

 

Matter of fact, they wasted 30 days trying to get IDPR to take over the process, but finally realized that that was not going to happen. But the current process underscores how they are not prepared to handle this. And they seem to have made matters more complicated.

 

I am told the emergency rules will be in effect for a while, and they can’t be amended. They have to be replaced with the final rules to be proposed. Which leads to questions about how we are going to do things in the interim since they put mandatory minimums on training hours and such.

 

During all this, I have been sending in emails and comments about the proposals. Some they listened to, some they didn’t. It has become clear that their legal department is the largest impediment that we have to any sort of an orderly and simple process.

 

So here is a list of complaints I sent into them. After my talk Friday, I will add in the answers I got.

 

The rules still do not contain a definition of “pubic “storage” thus leaving courses unable to comply by not knowing what to teach.

 

** Looks like they have defined this, but they are talking about places that have lockers if they don’t want guns on the property or in their building. It may come out all together.

 

1. Is ISP now going to require each instructor, to file multiple course curriculums? An instructor may work or teach under multiple training groups as an independent contractor. They may teach different curriculum at each training group as each training group may have written their own for liability purposes. Original discussions centered around there being two identifiers; an instructor name/number which identified the certified instructor and a curriculum identifier which identified which curriculum was taught.

As we have explained before, these need to work in a matrix that checks hours of training against topics to be required and the qualification. But the Rules and ISP is not allowing that to happen.

 

 

** Looks like curriculums will be given a number and they will list all the approved curriculums so instructors will use whatever number for the course they taught. Expect to see NRA basic pistol and PPIH or PPOH to get assigned numbers that each instructor can use. I would guess this will apply to the Illinois Carry curriculum as well. Other training groups may have proprietary courses they will teach and will get their own numbers. So each instructor will not have to resubmit, NRA courses for approval.

 

2. FCCL to be required for instructors. There is no requirement under the Act that instructors maintain a FCCL. This appears to be another way to discourage instructors, drive up fees, and limit the number of people being able to teach or obtain a permit.

 

Many instructors both within and outside the state may be law enforcement officers. By virtue of their job and federal law they need not have a FCCL in or der to carry a firearm within Illinois or across state lines. Yet ISP now wants to add the additional requirement to add additional cost to instructors.

 

** another case of trying to solve a problem and creating more. They wanted to do this as a way to know if an instructor were to become disqualified. The permit list is going to be bumped against other databases for criminal records and such. But one to work on.

 

 

Why should a non-resident Le who is covered under LEOSA have to get a carry permit from Illinois?

 

** they don’t have a answer for this one, but are now aware of it.

 

 

3. And since they are requiring instructors to have their FCCL by April 16th, what happens if the Department fails to issue it in time? What happens if an instructor does not apply until Feb 16th, under the 90 day time allotted for the Department ? What happens to those instructors applying after April 16th? Will they need to have a FCCL before they can begin to teach?

 

** doesn’t appear that they thought this one all the way through. But ties into them trying to figure out how to deal with instructors that become disqualified.

 

4. Mandatory minimum training hours. As covered before, the mandatory minimums seem designed to eliminate NRA courses from the 16 hour eligibility. In preparing their curriculum, many had planned to teach either an NRA basic pistol course or Personal Protection In the Home (PPIH) or Personal Protection Outside the Home (PPOH) for the first 8 hours. Then teach the supplemental 8 hour program. NRA courses do not line up with the mandatory time requirements in the emergency rules. Thus, instructors will be required to develop from scratch a 16 hour course. And thus absorb all the liability for such.

 

**Looks like mandatory minimums are going away and will become guidelines or recommendations. And NRA courses listed above will count towards the 8 hours.

 

Furthermore, the time requirements on Illinois law and weapons handling do not take into consideration any advanced courses where individuals have prior experience and me be looking for a different type of course. Those experienced individuals may be looking for more time on the range as a defensive pistol course. Or more time in dealing with legalities of use of force the legal implications, after it is employed.

 

** again the minimums are going to be recommendations and people/trainers will be able to adjust to the level of the student.

 

These mandatory time requirements are arbitrary and appear to be designed to discourage instructors through liability or forcing them to design Illinois specific courses, instead of using national standards or accepted curriculums. They seek to treat every applicant as if they are some raw recruit entering the police academy with less than a high school diploma. And not recognizing that many of the applicants will be former members of the armed forces who may have had extensive time in combat roles, yet wants to treat them as if they have minimal skills.

 

5. ISP continues to require the use of IDPR licensed fingerprint vendors. The intent of the Act was to be able to use both vendors and local law enforcement and a change in law took place to allow local law enforcement to be exempt from IDPR licensure to be able to submit fingerprints. Again this adds costs to both instructors and applicants, both from the fees charged to the time it take to find and access a IDPR vendor. Some counties don’t even appear to have licensed vendors. Which still leaves unanswered the question about how out of state instructors and applicants apply without having to come to Illinois.

 

** trying to figure out why they can’t use law enforcement. They did a test run with Oswego OD and found some of the problems. And their legal department is mucking this whole thing up.

They also understand they have a problem with out of stater’s and it’s going to get worse.

 

6. The 16/8 hour standards still do not address those people with training credits of less than 8 hours and how those supplemental courses are to be taught.

 

** looks like they are going to approve courses that are shorter than 8 hours. There may be a 2 hour minimum. But we are working through the Utah 4 hours and CFP 5 hours and the need for supplemental.

 

7. ISP is imposing additional live fire requirements that are not in the Act. Again this adds additional cost to the training.

 

** they are concerned about the novice, but I think you will see the suggested topics change in this category.

 

8. Under 1231.40 g) all the curriculum is to be taught by an approved instructor. This leaves no room for instructors to use lawyers, or law enforcement officers to teach the Use of Force portion of the training requirements. It may actually give rise to complaints to the Courts and Bar Association by having non-lawyers teach subjects of law. Thus adding to the exposure for liability to instructors again.

 

**working on trying to get Les and attorney’s to be able to teach use of force under the watchful eye of an instructor. So far they seem open to this.

 

9. Why are instructors being asked to verify things they have not taught? Under 1231.50 instructors are being required to sign off on prior training. This exposes instructors to another level of liability and makes them have to become experts in documents. Why is it the instructors responsibility to see that an applicant meets ALL of the training requirements and not the Department’? The Department is the one with knowledge of approved courses. They are the one who can tell if a person had an honorable discharge or not. They are the ones charged with implementing the Act, yet they seem to be shuffling off their responsibilities and trying to get instructors to shoulder more of the liability and responsibility.

 

**sounds as if this will move back to ISP. They keep trying to make this more difficult than it needs to be. And some in their office are trying to avoid any sign off for liability reasons. But they also seem ill prepared for the regulatory functions of this law as they do not view themselves as a regulatory agency.

 

10. 1231.50 e) again uses arbitrary amounts of training in order to be considered for credited hours of training. A 40 hour course from the lethal force institute, a nationally recognized group for firearms training, may not qualify under these guidelines as the course may spend more time one subject than another.

 

Additionally, there is nothing in the Act that limits credited hours to just Firearms safety, principals of marksmanship or care, cleaning, loading and unloading of concealable firearms. This appears to be another requirement fabricated out of whole cloth at the department’s whim.

 

Why does the Department what to exclude courses that teach use of force and/or interacting with law enforcement? Why are their arbitrary limits on what counts. It can actually be argued that a 40 mandatory firearms course from the Illinois Law Enforcement Training Standards Board may not qualify because of these time limits. Yet it is the exact course that allows law enforcement officers to carry guns in public.

 

** again it looks like mandatory minimums are going to go away.. They are terrified about the novice citizen carrying a gun. And if something goes wrong, who will be accountable.

 

11. It remains unclear if the State Police are going to recognize hunter safety courses for the 8 hour credit. Even though it is a 16 hour course, the time requirements under the rules may preclude it.

 

**looks like Hunter’s ed will count toward training credits

 

12. Weapons handling 4 hours range time. If there may be a choke point in the system it could be the lack of ranges in the state. If the Department is going to require all weapons handling to be done on the range, they are going to drastically increase the cost of training. Current range fees in the suburban areas are funning $20-$25 per hour per person. . A 4 hour course will cost about $100 per student in range fees. Those costs will likely be shifted to the students thus running up the cost of training and making the cost of getting a permit even more expensive.

 

** dealt with under the no mandatory minimums.

 

13. If instructors are supposed to keep records of their students, does this mean that they will be required to keep copies of DD214s, other training the Department wants instructors to certify?

 

** This function will move back to ISP

 

How are they supposed to keep these and documents? Do they keep paper copies, electronic copies and how are they supposed to be experts to tell what real from forged?

 

** looks like they answered this that the instructors can decide how they want to keep records.

 

Because they didn’t want to involve us and show us draft rules, they kept stepping ina pile of crap cuase they keep over thinking this stuff. They really are not prepared to handle the regulatory function. Currently, the instructor apps come in go through a check then get carried over to the Academy for sorting through the credentials. There were supposed to be running batch background checks at night, but that came to a screeching halt because they wanted things perfect. So that appears to be the slowdown in getting more instructors approved.

 

Like I said before they wanted this to go to IDPR after the law was passed and wasted 30 days just dickering with that. There are going to be growing pains with this and every time their legal department tries to over engineer or over think things we get foul up like the mandatory minimum time allotments.

I pointed out to them that they need to allow gun dealers to set up accounts with them so that when they do one stop shops for the permit applications, they can process the applications, and if there is a problem with one, they don’t dump the whole batch like they do with FOID cards, because they all came in on a single check. They were not even aware of this type of a problem and now have something else to look into. So I can only imagine that a lot of Tylenol and green bottles are going to be consumed as we try to get through this.

[mauserme]

...

I am told the emergency rules will be in effect for a while, and they can’t be amended. They have to be replaced with the final rules to be proposed. Which leads to questions about how we are going to do things in the interim since they put mandatory minimums on training hours and such.

...

 

Just a thought, but this could be fixed by the legislature if it becomes a big enough problem for them.

[Tvandermyde]

trying to get it fixed before then

[C0untZer0]

Thanks for the update.

 

The two people who are most responsible for this mess are Mike Madigan and John J. Cullerton. Instead of taking the 180 days to get to work and take time to create a good bill with enough details that it could be implemented, they fought to the last minute, delayed and delayed and delayed and then rushed through a bill with very little interface into the ISP.

 

Thanks for all your hard work Todd.

[TyGuy]

Er mah gerd, sounds like a giant cluster pluck. Good luck TV.

[Drylok]

They are terrified about the novice citizen carrying a gun. And if something goes wrong, who will be accountable.

 

How about the person who did the shooting be responsible??? If someone who has a drivers license is driving down the road recklessly and they cause an accident is their driver ed teacher from highschool or the instructor at the DMV held accountable?

[AlphaKoncepts aka CGS]

Thanks for staying on top of this. I'll have to re-read to properly digest all the information. ALOT going on.

[Rockdiver]

Tod,

 

this is not a knock, but why do we need to have lawyers or cops teach the legal? Other states get along fine. There would be no conflict in bringing in a lawyer or status officer familiar with the law as a guest speaker to assist, especially if the instructor felt weak on this issue and feared liability.

 

 

I love you like a brother for everything you have done for us....but on this....

 

The pole......the mouse poop.....this concept has both.

 

 

I know, look who's talking, right?

 

Rocco

[Rookie139]

Thanks for the update. Very interesting reading

[bobapunk]

Thanks for that Update Todd!

 

I, for one, and happy to have this information. At least we know things are being "worked on"!

[wtr100]

Todd - thanks for beating answeres out of them

 

I don't care what everyone else here says about you you're the best ...

 

Seriously thanks for holding their noses to the fire and feet to the grindstone ...

[bobapunk]

Tod,

 

this is not a knock, but why do we need to have lawyers or cops teach the legal? Other states get along fine. There would be no conflict in bringing in a lawyer or status officer familiar with the law as a guest speaker to assist, especially if the instructor felt weak on this issue and feared liability.

 

 

I love you like a brother for everything you have done for us....but on this....

 

The pole......the mouse poop.....this concept has both.

 

 

I know, look who's talking, right?

 

Rocco

 

Nothing Todd posted would REQUIRE the use of LEO/Attrny. It would simply allow an LEO/Attrny who is NOT and approved FCCL Instructor to participate in the instruction of a class.

[cm.stites]

Typical illinois and typical ISP they want the money but not to do the work.

[Bud]

...

I am told the emergency rules will be in effect for a while, and they can’t be amended. They have to be replaced with the final rules to be proposed. Which leads to questions about how we are going to do things in the interim since they put mandatory minimums on training hours and such.

...

 

Just a thought, but this could be fixed by the legislature if it becomes a big enough problem for them.

 

+1

 

I can solve the whole problem right now, have the Legislature copy Indiana's program and implement it right now

[cm.stites]

...

I am told the emergency rules will be in effect for a while, and they can’t be amended. They have to be replaced with the final rules to be proposed. Which leads to questions about how we are going to do things in the interim since they put mandatory minimums on training hours and such.

...

 

Just a thought, but this could be fixed by the legislature if it becomes a big enough problem for them.

 

+1

 

I can solve the whole problem right now, have the Legislature copy Indiana's program and implement it right now

+ infinity.

[45b]

Let us hope that this will allow them to acceptance of instructors faster than the 23 that has taken them 16 days. At the current rate the instructors applications won't be done in this decade. Keep up the good work Todd. We have your back. If you need any help, Myself and my training partner are located in Springfield and Monmouth . By the way, thanks for your help with my soldiers issue in Elgin last year.

[bobapunk]

If the ISP wanted the IDPR to be "in charge" of all of this, why didn't they try to get that in the original bill? It is not like they could have been surprised that a Carry Law was enacted... They had their input every step of the way and never raised this issue until now?

[Warners]

What a cluster.....it looks like it's going to be a while before this all gets sorted out. As I was reading the FAQ on the ISP website last week, I kept coming to the same conclusion "They're trying to hang the instructors". They want to push ALL of the liability on the instructors. I kept getting the feeling as I read through it they were saying, "So you want to teach the Illinois Concealed Carry class, huh? Go ahead, we DARE you to". Getting rid of the mandatory training hours, and pretty much leaving EVERYTHING up to the discretion of the instructors was my first clue.....

 

Warner

[sirflyguy]

It is a pervasive culture of elitism, arrogance, and incompetence. The elitism and arrogance leads to the incompetence. This is Illinois government as it has been for years. .

[Tvandermyde]

Tod,

 

this is not a knock, but why do we need to have lawyers or cops teach the legal? Other states get along fine. There would be no conflict in bringing in a lawyer or status officer familiar with the law as a guest speaker to assist, especially if the instructor felt weak on this issue and feared liability.

 

 

I love you like a brother for everything you have done for us....but on this....

 

The pole......the mouse poop.....this concept has both.

 

 

I know, look who's talking, right?

 

Rocco

 

Its not a requirement. Just a suppliment if instructors are uncomfortable teaching it. Not mandated, but an option.

 

We are trying to make this easy and limit liability. I think we are on the same page,

[aka]

Thanks for the update.

 

To echo TyGuy's comment "Er mah gerd, sounds like a giant cluster pluck."

 

Sigh! Sometimes I wonder why I am in this state?

[Tvandermyde]

I'm here cause my job is here and my friends are here and I don't want to leave anyone behind enemy lines with out a buddy. . .

[Craigcelia]

Tod,

 

this is not a knock, but why do we need to have lawyers or cops teach the legal? Other states get along fine. There would be no conflict in bringing in a lawyer or status officer familiar with the law as a guest speaker to assist, especially if the instructor felt weak on this issue and feared liability.

 

 

I love you like a brother for everything you have done for us....but on this....

 

The pole......the mouse poop.....this concept has both.

 

 

I know, look who's talking, right?

 

Rocco

I agree.

[Craigcelia]

Tod,

 

this is not a knock, but why do we need to have lawyers or cops teach the legal? Other states get along fine. There would be no conflict in bringing in a lawyer or status officer familiar with the law as a guest speaker to assist, especially if the instructor felt weak on this issue and feared liability.

 

 

I love you like a brother for everything you have done for us....but on this....

 

The pole......the mouse poop.....this concept has both.

 

 

I know, look who's talking, right?

 

Rocco

 

Its not a requirement. Just a suppliment if instructors are uncomfortable teaching it. Not mandated, but an option.

 

We are trying to make this easy and limit liability. I think we are on the same page,

Ok, awesome.

[Drylok]

Tod,

 

this is not a knock, but why do we need to have lawyers or cops teach the legal? Other states get along fine. There would be no conflict in bringing in a lawyer or status officer familiar with the law as a guest speaker to assist, especially if the instructor felt weak on this issue and feared liability.

 

 

I love you like a brother for everything you have done for us....but on this....

 

The pole......the mouse poop.....this concept has both.

 

 

I know, look who's talking, right?

 

Rocco

Better yet, for the legal part why can't we just pass out copies of the laws they want covered, talk abou them for a while and then let the students be responsible for their own freaking actions? We are firearms instructors not attorneys and do they realize how much it would cost to have an attorney or the like come to a class?

[RonOglesby - Now in Texas]

...

I am told the emergency rules will be in effect for a while, and they can’t be amended. They have to be replaced with the final rules to be proposed. Which leads to questions about how we are going to do things in the interim since they put mandatory minimums on training hours and such.

...

 

Just a thought, but this could be fixed by the legislature if it becomes a big enough problem for them.

 

+1

 

I can solve the whole problem right now, have the Legislature copy Indiana's program and implement it right now

 

Some of them loved to quote parts of the Indiana law didn't they? we'll here is their chance!

[RockerXX]

...

I am told the emergency rules will be in effect for a while, and they can’t be amended. They have to be replaced with the final rules to be proposed. Which leads to questions about how we are going to do things in the interim since they put mandatory minimums on training hours and such.

...

 

Just a thought, but this could be fixed by the legislature if it becomes a big enough problem for them.

 

+1

 

I can solve the whole problem right now, have the Legislature copy Indiana's program and implement it right now

 

+ Another

 

Have the Legislature toss out the flaming turd they passed and replace it with some real carry provisions...

[sirflyguy]

Better yet, for the legal part why can't we just pass out copies of the laws they want covered, talk abou them for a while and then let the students be responsible for their own freaking actions? We are firearms instructors not attorneys and do they realize how much it would cost to have an attorney or the like come to a class?

I don't know, but it may be part of the plan to limit concealed carriers. I really think it scares the higher-ups to death, as TV said, to have "novices" packing. For that matter, the true believers don't want anyone except the special folks packing or having bodyguards. This state has operated on limiting constitutional rights for decades now. Just because a cc law was enacted doesn't mean their tactics will change overnight.

[TyGuy]

Novices packing? I'll take the novices packing ANY day over the experts of NYPD. Novices have a much much much lower innocent bystander shooting rate.

[sirflyguy]

Novices packing? I'll take the novices packing ANY day over the experts of NYPD. Novices have a much much much lower innocent bystander shooting rate.

For sure.