Another Day, Another Rally

Another group visited the Statehouse today to advance their cause. This time it was a group of Second Amendment proponents wanting to expand the number of locations where firearms are permitted. Illinois law includes a couple dozen locations that are exempt from concealed carry. Here's a picture of the marchers on their way to the Statehouse. 

AG Madigan Paves Way for Board Review of Rejected Concealed Carry Applicants

The Illinois State Police have adopted an emergency rule that allows rejected concealed carry applicants to learn why their application was denied. Still at issue was that the 200 denied applicants wouldn't be permitted to have their applications looked at by the review board under the new rules. It appears that the Attorney General is working on that:

The only way those applicants would be allowed to get a new review is if the judge sent them back to the board, the ISP said. The attorney general’s decision is a response to that. 

“We’re going to be asking the courts to remand the cases back to the review board for more process as a result of the new emergency rules ISP announced last week,” said Madigan’s spokeswoman Natalie Bauer.

The players in Illinois' concealed carry law continue to expand. First there was the federal court decision that struck down Illinois' concealed carry ban and provided a 6-month window to prompt reluctant Illinois legislators to pass a concealed carry law. Then there were lawsuits filed by applicants that were denied conceal carry permits without being provided the grounds for denial. Then the Illinois State Police implemented an emergency rule to allow applicants to learn the basis of a denial. Now the Attorney General is asking the Cook County Circuit Court to remand the cases to the review board so that the litigants have the benefit of the new emergency rules. 

How government actually works is very different from that old Schoolhouse Rock video. Laws and sausages, my friends. Laws and sausages. 

Previous Posts

State Police Issue Emergency Concealed Carry Rules

Concealed Carry Law Lacks Transparency for Denied Applicants

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.

Concealed Carry Law Lacks Transparency for Denied Applicants

The Chicago Tribune reports (digital subscription required) about a lawsuit filed by individuals denied a concealed carry permit following an appeal to the State Concealed Carry Licensing Review Board responsible for reviewing challenges to applicants. The review process was instituted to provide a measure of "due process" so that applicants could appeal rejections for further evaluation and correction where appropriate. The process works as follows:

The state police review every application and can automatically deny any applicant who does not follow application rules, pay appropriate fees or meet standard background requirements. A provision in the law also allows local police and other officials to object to a person's application after the applicant has passed a fingerprint background check and met the other requirements for a license. 

The Concealed Carry Licensing Review Board, a panel with law enforcement backgrounds, considers the objections in private and is not required to explain the reasons behind its decisions except under order from a court, according to the state police's interpretation of the statute.

Apparently the statutory review process is ambiguous and makes it impossible for the state review board to inform applicants of the reason for their rejection. State Representative Brandon Phelps, an architect of the law, agrees that the law needs some tweaking:

"The problem is that we gave the review board the benefit of the doubt, and we didn't give them any rules to operate by," said Phelps. "Right now, they are too secretive, and that's not the way we wanted it. We wanted them to be an extra layer of security to make sure people who don't deserve a concealed carry license don't get one."

The Illinois State Rifle Association is quite obviously unhappy with some of the denials:

Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, a plaintiff in the NRA lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, said some of the denials are likely mistakes."A lot of people have been denied wrongly, perhaps because of mistaken identity, inefficient court records or records that weren't filled out properly," said Pearson. "We've got cases of people who never had an (domestic abuse) order of protection issued against them, but someone who had a similar name did. The purpose is to get all this straightened out and run things more accurately.

And gun control groups are seizing on the lawsuit as an example of what they perceive as the expansionist aims of gun rights supporters:

Some gun-control advocates, however, view the wave of lawsuits as an effort by pro-gun advocates to loosen restrictions in the state's concealed carry statute, which was hastily cobbled in the General Assembly after a U.S. appellate court struck down the concealed carry ban in December 2012. Law enforcement review was a compromise needed to get the law through the legislature, according to representatives from both sides who were involved in the debate. 

"It's the NRA's game plan across the country. When there's not legislation pending, they file lawsuits," said Mark Walsh, campaign director for the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence. "They never liked this part of the bill. But in a lot of communities, local law enforcement knows a lot more about whether someone should have a concealed carry permit. They know if they're going to someone's house every two weeks on a domestic violence call."

It's difficult to understand how simply informing an individual as to why his or her application was denied somehow undermines the input afforded local law enforcement regarding an applicant's fitness to carry a firearm. This claim strikes me as a bit of hyperbole from those that remain fundamentally opposed to the concealed carry law. Applicants should only be denied based upon the parameters for denial under existing law.

The lack of transparency in the review process should be fairly easy to fix as long as concealed carry opponents recognize that, based upon federal court decree and state statute, the right to concealed carry is now settled law in Illinois.  And if there's a need to tighten the eligibility restrictions, so be it.