An example of an unwarranted FOID revocation

by John Boch

We posted a story about the extremely low rates of Firearm Owner Identification Card revocation earlier today.  In short, Illinois gun owners have less than four-tenths of one percent rate of FOID revocation, and most of the reasons for revocation have nothing to do with a criminal conviction – but in fact many are pulled for mere arrests.

We know of one case where a life-long FOID cardholder and GSL member was arrested by Urbana Police early last year on charges of burglary and felony theft related to metal theft.

Trust us…  we have zero sympathies for thieves.  Doubly so for scrap metal thieves who destroy perfectly good machines and structures to steal a few hundred bucks’ worth of scrap metal.  Our philosophy on people who do such things is about the same as we would do for child molesters, rapists, murderers and corrupt politicians:  Lightpole. Rope.  Offender.  Some assembly required.

Within three business days of this man’s arrest he was notified of the revocation of his FOID card.  “It takes those people five months to process my renewal in 2012, yet they can get me a revocation letter in three days.  What kind of (bleep bleep) is that?” he said.

After a couple of months, subsequent investigation revealed that the man had the business owner’s permission to recover scrap metal from the business.  Ordinarily he did the recovery during the weekdays when the facility was open.  On this particular day, it was on a weekend and the business was closed and someone noticed his work loading metals onto his trailer and called police.

All charges were dropped as the arrest was completely unwarranted – as was the revocation of his FOID card.

To add insult to injury, he’s an older, retired gentleman and has been in physical therapy since his arrest for a shoulder injury he suffered at the hands of the arresting officer.  He was a very pro-police kinda guy before all of this, but he says the loss of his gun rights following his arrest – not conviction – and the excessive use of force during the arrest and how he was treated that day have changed his thoughts on “supporting” local and state police.  Cleaning it up for our family blog, he says “Before, I’d always stop to help a cop in trouble.  Today, I wouldn’t cross the street to urinate on them (bleeeeepity bleep) if they were on fire.”

He has finally received his FOID card back – after paying his lawyer to work on his behalf and waiting SIX MONTHS for the process to drag out to have a new FOID card issued.