State Police Issue Emergency Concealed Carry Rules

In a previous post I wrote about lawsuits filed by individuals that were denied concealed carry licenses without having the basis of the denials explained. Looks like the the Illinois State Police are trying to respond to the complaints:

Citing a flood of lawsuits from applicants who were denied concealed carry permits because of objections from local law enforcement that were shrouded in secrecy, the Illinois State Police announced Monday that it will require a state review board to give more information about why applications are rejected. 

The amendments direct the board to notify an applicant if their application is likely to be denied, giving them an opportunity to refute the objection. 

The new rules, filed Thursday as emergency amendments and distributed publicly on Monday, are already in effect, according to the state police.

Here's how it would work:

Under the new rules, the board is required to notify an applicant if there is a credible objection to his or her application, give the basis of the objection and identify the agency that brought it. The applicant will have 10 days to respond.

That sounds like a reasonable improvement over the status quo. Even so, gun rights supporters aren't enamored of the emergency rules and don't think that ten days is enough time for an applicant to respond:

These new rules are an acknowledgement that the current system is fundamentally, broken, unfair and illegal.” said Thompson, but the rule don’t specify if they will apply to currently denied applicants. 

Among Thompson’s confers, he said, is the short period of time — 10 days — that applicants have to gather rebuttal evidence.

There are also some due process concerns:

J.D. Obenberger, a lawyer representing some of the denied applicants, said the rules fall short of fixing the board's most serious problems: The heavy representation of law enforcement and the leeway that the board has to consider information beyond applicants' criminal record.  

“Whether any applicant gets a hearing is totally by the discretion of a board that is dominated by law enforcement,” Obenberger said. “They assume that every arrest is going to be a good arrest..And that's not true.”

Bottom line -- the details of the concealed carry law are likely to remain a work in progress and many of the changes, regardless of how small, are likely to become proxy wars between those on either side of the gun debate. And some of these issues may spill over into statehouse elections as both parties search for ways to excite their base voters. 

Update: An emergency rule differs from a standard rule making in that the rule can go into effect for a set amount of time without formal approval from the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR). The rules must eventually be published in the Illinois Register and subjected to the appropriate public comment period and JCAR approval. The concealed carry rules concerning applicant objections are scheduled to be posted in the Illinois Register on July 25.