Over 40,000 Illinois residents applied for a gun permit over a two-week period this month, a jump of more than 500% over this time last year according to Illinois State Police.
“Take a full glass of coronavirus, shake in a shot of riots and another of this defund police notion, and everything goes crazy,” gun shop owner Mark Glavin told the Chicago Tribune. “Not to mention the backlog on background checks.”
The state’s mandatory 72-hour background check has stretched to more than a week for some of Glavin’s customers, putting Illinois residents in the same boat as Californians – who have a 10-day wait before they can take possession of recently bought firearms.
The firearms services bureau of the Illinois State Police is taking an average of 94 business hours — not counting holidays, weekends, the day the gun is purchased, or the day the sale is approved or denied — to process background checks, roughly a day longer than usual, according to state police spokeswoman Beth Hundsdorfer.
The bureau is responsible for issuing firearm owner’s identification cards and concealed carry licenses, as well as conducting background checks for licensed gun dealers when a sale is made. Its work started to pick up in March and has spiked in June, Hundsdorfer said. –Chicago Tribune
Between June 1 and June 17, there were over 42,089 applications for FOID cards vs. just 7,000 during the same period last year – an increase of 501%. Putting that into further context, there were 48,194 applications between December, January and February combined. – READ MORE
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