delays Archives -

A Right Delayed…

Is a right denied has been attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Given Dr. King was denied a carry permit in Alabama, this story from Mecklenburg County, North Carolina is a prime example of what he spoke about.

Local Charlotte TV station WBTV did an investigative report on how long it takes to get a North Carolina Concealed Handgun Permit in that county. If you took a class now, you will get your shall-issue permit in about a year.

By contrast, in surrounding counties such as Gaston and Union, you would receive your permit is about 90 days.

From WBTV:

“If you’re in Mecklenburg County, expect it to be about a year from the time you take the class, get an appointment to start your application and then the application will be processed,” Cranston said.
Records received by WBTV from the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office show that process is taking an incredibly long time.
“It’s not that the Sheriff’s Office is making it longer than it is cut out to be. It is that the numbers have went up,” Meckelnburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden said.
Since January of 2020 there have been more 13,000 new applications and nearly 5,000 renewals. About 42 percent of those have been completed.
McFadden says he’s hiring additional staff and has authorized thousands of hours of overtime to help catch up. WBTV asked him what else he could be doing to get through applications more quickly.
“We are going to hire more staff. But as we hire, the demand is still there,” McFadden said.
“Every application that we work on that is, that is an application that we’re catching up on. We’re trying to catch up, but the volume is still coming in,” McFadden said.
Right now, the sheriff’s office is currently processing applications from December and the next appointment to get fingerprinted isn’t until October of this year.
The process is supposed to take just 90 days and under state law the sheriff’s office is supposed to notify applicants whether their permit will be approved or denied in 14 days.

Follow the this link to see the video of the sheriff’s interview. He has poor mouthing down to an art form.

I have no knowledge of any pending lawsuits given he is in violation of state law. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if one or more are on the horizon.

Huge Backlog On FOID Card Processing In Illinois

So many Illinois residents have applied for a Firearm Owner’s ID Card (FOID) since December that it has swamped the system according to a report by CBS Chicago. The Illinois State Police report that they have a backlog of over 70,000 applications for the card. This backlog has created extraordinary wait times to receive the card. The FOID card is required to purchase both firearms and ammunition in the State of Illinois.

People applying for Illinois Firearm Owner’s Identification cards are waiting more than 60 days as the State Police experience one of its busiest months ever processing applications, spokeswoman Monique Bond said Tuesday.

More than 70,000 FOID card applications have been received in March, Bond said, putting it on track to be the record month so far for the program.

According to stats from the State Police website, they received 31,078 applications in December 2012, 61,172 in January 2013, and 56,078 in February 2013. To put this perspective, the January figure is their all time high and the December and February figures are the record numbers for that month of the year. When the March applications are added to the January and February applications, the number of applications received in the first quarter of the year will be more than 50% of what was received in 2012.

430 ILCS 65 Section 5 states:

The Department of State Police shall either approve or deny all applications within 30 days from the date they are received, and every applicant found qualified pursuant to Section 8 of this Act by the Department shall be entitled to a Firearm Owner’s Identification Card upon the payment of a $10 fee.

Nothing in the statute says anything about exceptions for processing larger than normal numbers of applications.

Gun store owners are disputing the amount of time that the Illinois State Police say that people are actually waiting.

However, the state police’s contention that applicants have to wait 64 days for a card is disputed by Greg Tropino Sr., president of GAT Guns in East Dundee. He told The (Elgin) Courier-News that he is hearing from his customers that it is taking them 10 to 15 weeks to receive a FOID card that gun owners in Illinois are required to have.

Mr. Tropino goes on to suggest that when people hear that items will be banned that they rush to buy them before that happens.

As the quote attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. states, “A right delayed is a right denied.”