The Chicago Sun-Times wrings their hands over the 82% of the time the State of Illinois’ Concealed Carry License Review Board over-rules Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s objections to concealed carry applicants.
Could it be the rabidly anti-gun Dart should be more selective in his objections, instead of filing on anyone and everyone who has any law-enforcement contact whatsoever?
Editorial: Concealed gun law allowing questionable people to carry
(Sun-Times) – Two years after Illinois’ concealed-carry law went into effect, it’s time we took a hard look at whether people who are a danger to themselves or others are getting permits to carry hidden weapons.
Under the law, even people who been arrested for violence are eligible to carry concealed weapons. The law leaves it up to local police to object if someone who shouldn’t be packing heat applies for a permit.
But that extra safeguard apparently is not protecting us the way it should, at least in Cook County, whose residents account for about a quarter of the state’s concealed-carry permit applications, according to State Police numbers released in January.
According to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, when he files an objection, the Illinois Concealed Carry Licensing Review Board goes ahead and grants a permit anyway 82 percent of the time. That’s a pretty good batting average for people who have records that a professional lawman finds scary.
Tom Dart a professional lawman?
Does he look like a professional?
He’s a professional Democrat politician, not a professional cop.
According to Dart’s numbers, the sheriff has objected to a total of 3,230 applications. Of those 1,950 on which the review board has acted, only 351 were denied. The other 1,599 were approved anyway, and the applicant got a permit.
In one example, the board granted a permit over Dart’s objections to a person who had two arrests for unlawful use of a weapon, a violation of an order of protection and a domestic battery case.
Our nation is founded upon the bedrock principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty. If Cook County prosecutors and courts aren’t convicting guilty persons, then perhaps its time for a new county prosecutor, eh?
Does that sound like a “law-abiding individual” who should be permitted to carry a concealed weapon?
And those numbers likely understate the seriousness of the problem. Some people with violent pasts who apply for a concealed carry permit remain completely off the radar of local law enforcement because their arrests took place in other counties, and police are not permitted to use the most comprehensive data base for background checks — the Law Enforcement Agencies Data System — when evaluating concealed-carry permit applications.
Consider the case of 45-year-old Richard Idrovo, who just this month shot his girlfriend and himself to death at a Loop business. Idrovo possessed a valid Illinois concealed carry permit though he had a “domestic violence history,” according to police. We now know his record contained a 1994 order of protection and a 1997 arrest on misdemeanor charges of assault and violation of an order of protection. But without LEADS, Idrovo’s full record didn’t show up, and no police department objected when Idrovo applied for a concealed-carry permit.
And at the time he was a law-abiding citizen. A “history” is not a conviction.
…
But we also know there are people out there who simply should not be allowed to carry a gun — and they are allowed.
Frankly, the Sun-Times believes nobody out there should be allowed to carry a gun.
Is it any wonder the Sun-Times has one foot in bankruptcy court and the other foot on a banana peel?
Some, like Rich Miller at Capitol Fax (no link, as we’re not driving any traffic to him) are claiming there’s “no excuse for this loophole”.
Freedom is not a “loophole”, Mr. Miller.
For a take on the gun owners’ perspective, we bring you a comment by Todd Vandermyde. He’s the NRA-ILA’s man in Springfield. Here it is, as posted at Capitol Fax.
Wow, go spend a couple of days at the range and look at all that I missed. So mush to comment on I hope I don’t miss anything.
State Police made the decision not to allow LEADS to be used. I forget the exact reasoning for this, but Dart in his own words wanted to, and presumably still does want to file blanket objections to people.
He wants to file objections based upon a single arrest, where there may be no conviction and the offense is not even a prohibitor to a carry permit much less firearms ownership/possession. You don’t have to like the law or agree with the concept, but simply trying to shut it down and/or deny as many people as possible a fundamental right is just wrong.
People often wonder why “gun guys” won’t go along with this proposal or that proposal as it only sound/seems reasonable. Yet these types of abuses are why we don’t go along with them.
Based upon Dart’s own criteria, he would object to Shawn Gowder’s application. A person from Englewood who was caught and convicted of carrying a firearm for self-defense back around 2000. After the Court struck Chicago’s handgun ban, and they instituted their new licensing system, the City denied Shawn’s ability to own a handgun based upon this misdemeanor conviction. Shawn sued and the City lost and they had to issue him his City permit. Shawn has a carry license today. He’s been a union electrician for as long as I have known him and a standup guy. But according to Sheriff Dart, he would file a blanket objection to him applying for a carry permit.
And so, those that don’t like guns, don’t like carry want to reduce it to a mere privilege – not a fundamental constitutionally protected right. The costs and hurdles are already too high and prevent a number of people from being able to get a permit.
I have helped several people file responses to objections from Cook County. Some for mistaken identity, same name and DOB and Cook confuses the criminal with the guy with no record. I’ve had to help people file court challenges even when records have been expunged.
So since there are people in public office, who want to thumb their nose at the court ruling, who want to find an end run around the law to try and neuter it, they complain that they can’t try and undo this law.
Let’s not forget that Chicago had an opportunity to change it’s law before SCOTUS ruled. They didn’t they gambled. And they choose to try and continue a ban. Then after the Court ruling they moved this/far to allow for ownership. And that was fought in court and they had to move again. To date Chicago has paid over $2 million in attorney’s fees to the NRA. Not counting any of the other lawsuits. And they still owe at least another $1 million, and we are not even close to being done.
Illinois had a chance for a carry law over the last 20 years. They said no. The anti-gunners said no. And so we went to court. And we won. And then buttressed by a court decision, that the Attorney General refused to appeal, the legislature crafted a bill. But that still wasn’t good enough and Quinn vetoed it and wanted more gun control.
We didn’t get everything we wanted in the bill. But all along the way, those that complain about the “law” had a chance to craft a different one. But said no for all those years. So now they get to live with what got passed.
And while Rich says we need to make concessions, to my friend I say, NO we don’t. Chicago continues to try and restrict carry in spite of the preemption law. Others want to undo the few gains we’ve made, or even make it more restrictive than what it is. Not gonna happen. We don’t plan on giving up one inch of what we gained. Nor do we plan on making it easier for anti-gun politicians or bureaucrats to try and stamp out a right they don’t like.
It is a fundamental Constitutionally protected right. Get use to it.
Based on the Scum-Times, I guess we should also not allow people to get a driver’s license because the had a DUI many years ago, but nothing else since.
Is it me, or does Mr. Dart seem to be a political hack trying to be a little tin-horn dictator in his little fiefdom?
Constitutional rights? Those are merely obstacles to him implementing his liberal utopia… for our own good, of course.
Rich Miller can go suck on a pacifier somewhere. He’s one of those “I’m a gun owner” liberals. He bans damn near everyone who isn’t somewhere between liberal and fascist on his blog. If it weren’t for Todd being the NRA, I’m sure he would have been gone long ago too.
Sam
He can’t even wear a uniform or a suit? He doesn’t respect the office any more than he respects our rights.
He can go pound sand.
Excellent Article!
As a member on a website promoting CCW in IL, last year I suggested that while the person often credited with the enactment of CCW in Illinois was Mary Shepard, she wasn’t the only person responsible.
While Ms. Shepard provided a real face of the result of our legislatively imposed victimhood, and I don’t doubt that the image of her battered visage provided some motivation for the court (as well as an effective counter to such a prohibition being “victimless”), I wished to remind people that the case that won our cause was not named “Shepard v Madigan”, but “Moore v Madigan”, for the second case citing almost identical circumstances, but with one important difference.
While Ms. Shepard was a law abiding citizen who had permits from other states who was denied her ability to defend herself under color of authority, Michael Moore was a retired Cook County Sheriff’s Corrections officer, who was refused a “retired” ID card – and thus the ability to participate in the Illinois Retired Officer Concealed Carry program and carry a firearm under LEOSA (HR 218) – by none other than Tom Dart, the faithful {D} water bearer turned “Law Enforcement Professional” not through decades wearing a badge and walking a beat, but courtesy of the voters of Cook County.
Officially Moore and the other corrections deputies were refused ID’s because they were assigned to the jail – but their having the title of “Deputy”, undergoing the same training and qualifications for carrying a gun on and off duty just like the “road” deputies might lead one to think that the refusal was more likely to Dart’s dislike for guns in general (one he has made no effort to conceal and which kept him completely in line with party policy).
His “because I can” attitude resulted in multiple lawsuits against him and ILETSB by several retirees (including one in 2010 bearing his name: Moore v Trent et al, available at http://www.abisoft.org/opinions/2010/1_09-cv-01712_20101216.pdf), but they failed, the Courts holding that even if the retirees met the criteria, nothing in LEOSA or Illinois law could force an employer to offer a card to retirees.
If not for Dart’s arrogance, the case might not have had as qualified a plaintiff… one of those “highly trained police officers” that the liberals kept using as exemplars, suddenly unworthy of the same ability he had exercised for 30 years.
So when you see Tommy Dart on TV ranting and raving about “the irresponsible Act” and blaming “us”? The only irresponsible act he is really ranting about might be his own short-sightedness that resulted in the eventual passage of the FCCA, and the target of his ire might be his own reflection in the lens of the TV camera.