Hap

Here is a transcript of the oral arguments, from the SCOTUS web site. 20-843_8n5a.pdf

Illinois is shall-issue now as a result of a decision by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals (and the tireless efforts of a huge number of 2A supporters). That decision could have been appealed to the US Supreme Court. That it was not appealed is sometimes attributed to pressure on Illinois from states such as New York which did not want to risk a SCOTUS ruling which would apply nationwide. However, had the case been appealed and had SCOTUS ruled against the plaintiffs, Illinois would likely not have the carry law it does now.

Renewal notice dated 10/1, received 10/9 (I guess that’s the new, slow USPS service at work), renewal was fairly straightforward. Good job on FSB’s part.

The complaint acknowledges past decisions at the state and at the 7th Circuit upholding semiauto bans but asserts that these were wrongly decided. The hard part will be getting the Supreme Court to grant cert. Well, that and getting the Court to find in favor of the good guys. That may be more likely now that it was pre-2017. It would help a lot to have a circuit split on this issue, which a victory at the 7th Circuit would provide.

It will be interesting to see how this lawsuit compares to other IL semiauto ban challenges.

Like most of us, I’ve been disappointed by the extent to which the Court has sidestepped 2A cases post-McDonald. But I’ve always had a feeling that when they finally took one, it would be gigantic. This one is beyond gigantic.

When the IL carry act was being debated, ISP did not say that they were going to need approval for a total revamp of all of their systems if they were to do their jobs as defined by the act. Nor did they say that the fees laid out for carry licenses were insufficient to fund their work. What's changed? To me it sounds more like a matter of ISP slow-walking all of this.

ATF has a document which explains exactly what the 4473 language means. Here's a link to download the document directly from the ATF web site: https://www.atf.gov/file/58791/download The critical language appears to be as follows: You'll need to check with an attorney for a legitimate legal opinion as to how this language applies to you.

Roberts, no way. Gorsuch, who really knows yet? What we can say is that with the current Court, the 2A stands a better chance of survival that it has in a long time. However disappointed I may be in the results of this election, assuming Biden turns out to be deemed to have won it, it's clear that all the work that went into making the last four years happen was definitely worth it. And we've still got a good chance of getting a Senate which will give us a shot at keeping the next occupant of the White House from making matters worse.

If only there was a majority of Supreme Court justices who respected the original words of the Framers.

Try Done Wright Gun Repair in Crystal Lake. $25 for pistol. I was just told they stopped doing FFL's in June. Nice small shop though. Thanks for trying!

Yet another former customer of Mike looking for an FFL in the northwest, west, or north suburbs. I'd prefer to continue to use a small shop even if costs aren't what they used to be - I think it's important to support what's left of the infrastructure in the hope that better days lie ahead.

2A advocates would be well served by careful study of the discipline shown by black civil rights leaders in the 20th century as they fought their way through the courts. In particular, a solid biography of Thurgood Marshall - covering his years leading the legal struggle, before he became a judge - should be required reading for all of us.

In keeping with the spirit of the times, Deerfield should at least get a trophy for participation.

Original expires 02/28/2019 Renewal submitted 11/9/2018 New license issue date 12/6/2018

I've received the mid-year FCCL data. I need to get some issues with the FOID data sorted out but while waiting for that to happen I thought I'd post some of the FCCL data. The attached PDF has the year-end FCCL data for the past few years along with the mid-year numbers, by county but without gender, along with the corresponding growth rates (annual, except YTD for 2018). Statewide, carry licenses are up about 10.0%. Cook County continues to exceed expectations at 12.7%. Cook also beats all of the collar counties: DuPage 10.0%, Kane 10.0%, Lake 9.6%, McHenry 9.7%, and Will 11.0%. The annual growth rates for 2015, 2016, and 2017 were 56.5%, 50.2%, and 27.3% respectively. The first-half growth rate of 10% suggests that we will see a further decline for 2018 but also that the decline may be leveling off. It will be interesting to see where it stabilizes. Note that one year has some licenses reported with a county of "null". The number is included but I have no idea whether it is meaningful. FCCL by county year-end 2014 through mid 2018.pdf

Mid-year data have been requested.

Nothing which is both systematic and recent. The older data are pretty dirty - there are far more counties in Illinois which have cities named Chicago than you would believe possible, lots of incorrect spellings (at city and county level), and just about every other sort of data entry error you can imagine. The newer data appear to be much cleaner but I haven't asked for the complete breakdown by city recently. I've settled, for now, on the county level as a good compromise - fine enough resolution to be useful in tracking differences across geographical areas over time, but easy enough for the ISP to provide without putting in an inordinate amount of effort. (I believe someone was considering asking for data based on ZIP codes but I don't know if any requests were actually filed.)

Some historical data added to first post.

It's been increasing steadily. I wouldn't be surprised if a fairly high percentage of recent applicants for FOID cards are also applying for carry licenses, either concurrently or soon after. There are strong hints that this is the case.

The populations of Cook and Will counties were estimated (US Census) to be 5,211,263 and 692,661 as of 7/1/2017. So the percentage of the population in these counties with CCLs (fudging a bit and using the 7/1/2017 population estimate for 12/31) are 1.48% and 2.71% respectively, i.e. a Will County resident is almost twice as likely to have a CCL as a Cook County resident. So, taking population into account, Will is comfortably ahead of Cook. To me what is more interesting is that of those Cook County residents who have gone to the trouble of getting a FOID card, 13.4% have gone on, despite the many obstacles to doing so, to get CCLs. This compares quite favorably with Will's figure of 14.6%. Both of these are larger than the statewide figure of 12.2%.

Apologies for the long gap in posts on this topic, but at the urging of Molly B. and mauserme I'm going to resume posting the data along with a small amount of analysis. I'd like to keep the most current data here in the first post, for easy reference, along with a summary of historical data. Other material will be posted farther down the thread. The first document is a mild reformatting of the ISP FOIA response and contains the counts of active FOID cards and CCLs for each county, broken down by gender, and with statewide totals: FOID+CCL by county and gender YE2017.pdf Also, here are the same data, with calculations of % female for FOID and CCL, along with my favorite stat, the percentage of FOID cardholders who also have CCLs. By the way, I sincerely hope that some creative IC member will chime in with a good name for this stat. I've been calling it "CCL density" which is about as inspiring as last night's pizza. In any case, this number is growing and reflects the growing interest in carry among the state's lawful gun owners, which the raw population percentage does not. FOID+CCL by county and gender YE2017 with stats.pdf Finally, here are compilations of FOID and FCCL stats from past years. These are year-end data, by county, with gender omitted to keep the documents readable. I've included %change figures for each year. The FOID data cover year-end 2015 through year-end 2017; the FCCL data go back another year, to 2014. If you're a stickler for consistency, be patient; I'll try to get the year-end 2014 FOID data (I have it for October 2014 but didn't request it for year-end). Note that for 2016, there is a county labeled "zzNull" and showing a fair number of both FOIDs and FCCLs. I assume these are entries in ISP's database for which no county was coded. I have no further information on these entries, although I assume they represent valid licenses and should be included in the statewide totals. Also note that Saline County shows a surprising drop in FOIDs for 2016, surprising enough that it is probably an error and possibly related to the "zzNull" figure. I have no further information on this one either. Active FOID by county at year end, 2015-2017.pdf Active FCCL by county at year end, 2014-2017.pdf FCCL as percentage of FOID at year end, 2015-2017.pdf

I wouldn't be surprised if they made a mistake and want very much to avoid having to admit it. There's really no other way to account for them being legit (well, as legit as anything is in Cook County) and ISP denying that your FOID has been revoked.

I don't get this. If he still has his FOIDWHY would he say it's lost or stolen? Sorry, I read the original as saying that they had taken the FOID. Rereading it on a decent-sized display it looks like they didn't. Sorry. This whole thing is just so far beyond weird. Even for Illinois it's weird.

At this point I would get a lawyer, report the incident to local LE + ISP, report the FOID as stolen, and apply for a replacement. Until you have some reason to think the people you dealt with were legit, I'd keep Cook County out of it. But mostly, get a lawyer and follow his advice.