Gun Owner ID Cards Soar In Chicago

January 25, 2012 8:11 PM

File Photo Of Glock Handgun. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Filed under

Heard on WBBM 780, Local, News

Don't Miss This

The BEST Place To Watch The BLACKHAWKS Game

VIDEO: Louis C.K. On What It Takes To Be A Real Father

Best Doughnut Shops In Chicago

Best Deep-Dish Chicago-Style Pizza

Don't Miss This

The BEST Place To Watch The BLACKHAWKS Game

VIDEO: Louis C.K. On What It Takes To Be A Real Father

Best Doughnut Shops In Chicago

Best Deep-Dish Chicago-Style Pizza

UPDATED 01/26/12 6:49 a.m.

CHICAGO (CBS) – Significantly more Chicagoans are arming themselves with guns.

As WBBM Newsradio’s Regine Schlesinger reports, over the past two years, the city has seen a 16 percent spike in the number of people holding state Firearm Owner’s Identification Cards.

LISTEN: WBBM Newsradio’s Regine Schlesinger reports

About 122,000 people possessed FOID cards at the beginning of this year compared to 105,000 at the beginning of 2010, said Monique Bond, spokeswoman for the Illinois State Police.

Illinois residents must possess a FOID card to buy guns in the state.

Illinois State Police officials check an applicant’s identification and background before issuing a card.

The uptick in FOID cards follows the City Council’s approval of a July 2010 ordinance lifting a 28-year-old ban on handguns in Chicago. That followed the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the McDonald v. Chicago case, which rendered the law unenforceable.

The city ordinance requires gun owners to obtain a city gun permit, register their firearms with the Chicago Police Department and keep their guns in their homes.

The Police Department could not immediately provide the number of guns currently registered in the city. At the end of 2010, the department had approved about 1,500 Chicago firearms permits and registered about 2,750 guns.

Todd Vandermyde, a legislative liaison for the National Rifle Association, said he believes Chicagoans are getting FOID cards to comply with state law but are snubbing their noses at the city ordinance because they believe the registration process is too onerous.

“They’re taking their chances with the city,” he said. “It’s just an ordinance violation.”

Officials said the statewide number of FOID card holders and applications for cards has also risen in recent years.

As of Jan. 1, 2011, there were nearly 1.4 million FOID card holders statewide, compared to more than 1.3 million a year earlier, Bond said. That’s an increase of more than 6 percent.

There were 321,000 applications for FOID cards statewide in 2011, compared about 287,500 in 2010, she added.

Vandermyde cited several reasons for the statewide rise: he thinks more women are getting guns; more people are hoping the state will pass a concealed-carry law; and more people believe the Obama administration will make it harder to get weapons in the future.

State Rep. Brandon Phelps (D-Harrisburg), an ardent gun rights supporter, says politics and the economy likely played a role in the rise in FOID registrations.

“I think you’re seeing a lot of people that are more or less breaking into places, and I think people just want to be able to protect themselves and their families,” Phelps said. “I’m going to talk to the state police to find out where the biggest increases were.”

Meanwhile, some downstate lawmakers continue to push for a concealed carry law in Illinois, which is the only state that does not have some such kind of law on the books.

Phelps proposed a concealed carry law last year. It fell a few votes shy last spring, before it was pulled before the vote could be recorded.

Phelps says he’ll likely call it again in March or April.

The Sun-Times Media Wire contributed to this report.

InalienableWrights

Gun owner cards?
I guess this is to make it easy to come and take them just like the 3rd Reich did.

Don’t delude yourself this IS the reason for this tyranny.

Southern Illinois

Just wait until HB1294 comes to Gun Owners attention:

“House Bill 1294, introduced by state Representative Edward Acevedo (D-2), seeks to ban countless semi-automatic handguns, rifles, and shotguns, many parts for them, as well as .50 caliber rifles and ammunition. ”

Every year – same thing.

JustAGuy

I say we should ban the Democrat party.

Do it for the children! :-D
Tory II

Edward Acevedo, former or active Chicago cop and Cook County Sheriff Deputy.

Chicago Alderman Edward Burke, also a former Chicago cop.
.

After people tell you the police support the 2nd amendment, just walk away.

Sam Spade

Yes, that plus it’s a way for liberal socialist to erfadicate decent citizens in this country! obuma loves what’s going on in the major cities of this nation!
malcom

Remember the Police AND military took citizen’s guns after hurrican katrina. so when people think the Constitution gives you a right to own a gun they better think again. the police don’t give an damn about the constitution. Thanks to liberals America as we used to know it is dead. You have to be an idiot to live amongst the liberals and their policies.

MeThePeople

The Constitution absolutely gives us the right to own guns.

BTW, the governor of Louisiana had a law passed after Katrine making it illegal for guns to be confiscated as a result of a natural distaster. Hopefully the law will not have to be tested.
John H.

Only in Louisiana were firearms confiscated by the police,at the same time in Mississippi armed citizens protected their property.
Robert Preston

to MeThePeople below. The Constitution doesn’t “give” us the right, it protects a pre-existing right. All rights exist before the Constitution, the Constitution then enumerates certain rights as protected.
Tex Expatriate

Those people in New Orleans did not fight back. Lots of places, incldung where I live, a police officer would die in any attempt to disarm a legally armed citizen.

I do agree with you that the America we once knew is gone, and it won’t be back until half the states secede from the present unconstitutional union and establish a new America based on the old Constitution.
Tory II

Amerika IS a police state:

Tory II

Edward Acevedo, former or active Chicago cop and Cook County Sheriff Deputy.

Chicago Alderman Edward Burke, also a former Chicago cop.
.

After people tell you the police support the 2nd amendment, just walk away.

InalienableWrights
Fed up

And why is this perceived as a problem? Illegal ownership has never been described by the liberal press as a problem.

royklopfenstein

According to Machiavelli, a culture divides roughly into three groups, government, producers and criminals. The producers are naturally the strongest of the three so the government allies itself with the criminals against the producers. When government becomes stronger than the producers the natural alliance shifts, initiating either revolution, alliance between the people and the criminals, or facism, alliance between the people and the government. If the producers are defeated you then get a failed state such as Somalia.

GFR

Nice. Of course they didn’t have a huge welfare class back then. Maybe now it’s Government, Producers, Criminals and “undecided”.

PG

The sorry liberal media can believe what it wants, but the people that I know who have obtained FOID’s recently are doing it so that they can purchase firearms to defend themselves when the economy of this state and perhaps this nation collapses under tremendous debt, and the welfare recipients take to the streets to rob and steal what they need to survive. Also, even if that doesn’t happen, since the criminals seem so well armed, why shouldn’t law abiding citizens?

Greg B

“since the criminals seem so well armed, why shouldn’t law abiding citizens?”

We should be, but some in politics want us defenseless. Illinois is the last state to prohibit law-abiding people from carrying guns. Every other liberal state has capitulated to reality, but not Illinois. The evil leftists who run the state will oppose concealed carry with the same arguments other liberals have used for years (it will lead to more violence, a crazy wild-west situation!). It’s never happened in the other 49 states. Illinois residents should be insulted. Maybe if a few more elderly veterans get stomped nearly to death people will finally throw the criminal enablers out.

Afro

The FOID Card is unconstitutional but the long arm of Illinois stops us from buying a firearm with out it even in other states that don’t require it. I was at a gun show in Kentucky last summer, and as soon as they saw my Illinois drivers license they wouldn’t sell me anything not even a case of discount ammo, even with my FOID card.

William Bebout

Illinois’ laws are ridiculous. I live right across the state line in Ky. I can’t even go to a sporting goods store and buy ammunition in Illinois.

jerry

I W: you are so right
AMPLITUDE JONES

insofar as any chicagoan can be an American, welcome back to the USA, newly armed folks! Center of mass, fire until the threat stops, but hit no innocents, and you will do OK!
Now, get the evil traitor pigs who did the victim disarm scheme to you, OUT OF OFFICE.
HARM NO INNOCENTS.

Baldy Kirby from Atlanta

Nooooo…

Actually, I think it’s time for a real life version of the TV series “Jericho”.

Jussssst in case another wave of stupidity sweeps the country come Election Day.

James 4:14

I would rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
Sam Spade

It’s no wonder gun sales are up with all the out of control animals running wild on the streets of Chicago! It’s all over the nation now and decentb people need to wake up to what’s happening in this country!

Since obuma was elected this gang banger street crime is way up!
TH

An increase in FOID cards does not equate to increased gun ownership. I suspect many people already owned firearms and are simply finally acquiescing to the state law. Additionally, a FOID is required to even rent a firearm at an IL range or inspect a firearm at a retailer. A retailer will not even allow you to handle a firearm without a FOID or an out-of-state drivers’ license. I know several people that have FOIDs simply as a convenience.
TH

An increase in FOID cards does not equate to increased gun ownership. I suspect many people already owned firearms and are simply finally acquiescing to the state law. Additionally, a FOID is required to even rent a firearm at an IL range or inspect a firearm at a retailer. A retailer will not even allow you to handle a firearm without a FOID or an out-of-state drivers’ license. I know several people that have FOIDs simply as a convenience.

bob

thanks for the most irrelevant, idiotic and useless post in the thread. get out much?

Steve from Texas

So what is it like being “irrelevant”, an “idiot” and quite “useless” in the basement typing your feckless drivle on Mom’s computer???

ex-infantry

I went to Chicago to visit my girlfriend’s parents for Christmas this year. I was able to carry my concealed handgun from Texas to the Illinois state line, where I had to unload it and place it in a locked case in the trunk of my car.

It was very nice walking around Chicago with the knowledge that only the criminals around me were armed.
Ct Sherwin

The 2d Amendment has been incorporated within the 14th Amendment–the 14th Amendment makes the 2d Amendment right to keep and bear arms fully applicable to the States. This shall not be INFRINGED!! The right to keep and bear arms must be regarded as a substantive GUARANTEE, not a PROHIBITION that can be ignored as long as the States legislate in an evenhanded manner. This is a privelege of American Citizenship–Sec 1, Fourteenth Amendment: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privleges or immunities of Citizens of the United States.” McDonald v. Chicago, supra., 561 US (2010). Vote ‘em OUT after putting them in JAIL!!!
Tyrell McPimpscoon

Anyone with common sense would not be anywhere near Chicago…or any other liberal/democrat controlled gangster infested cesspool.
Utterly stupid Chicago voters deserve to be under the thumb of the thugs, and the gun hating liberal city leaders who consider street thugs to be the”real victims”.

You thugs keep up the good work!!! Chicago deserves your reign of terror.

aw

would love to see what hick town you are from

jharry3

I guess words like that offend your slave attitude towards your masters who run the Democrat Plantation.
Mark

I would rather be from any “hick town” than that giant landfill, where you helped select our president, known as Chicago.
Tyrell McPimpscoon

jharry3…good one. The cllueless idiot is too ignorant to grasp what you have stated. While the ignorant fool slams the “small town hicks” and “rednecks”, the obama supporters are running amok and slaughtering themselves and any fools that choose to be around them…no complaints from me

fredlave

Ah, North Dakota. No FOID, no gun registration, and we have a “no duty to retreat” law which allows a homeowner to defend his house against anyone who tries to break in without fear of being sued. We do have a concealed carry law but those permits are not hard to get.
Chicago Nick

SO, the gun free zone murder spree in that city 20 miles to the south of me where WE ‘ve been gun owners all along outside the city limits while crime and murders soared during Daley’s gun free folly.

Check back in 6 months and watch the drop in crime. Freakin liberals.

Chicago Nick

oops, deleted a very important word from that fist paragraph

“SO, the gun free zone murder spree in that city 20 miles to the south of me (where WE ‘ve been gun owners all along outside the city limits) is hopefully over, meanwhile crime and murders soared during Daley’s gun free “I own the world” folly.

Check back in 6 months and watch the drop in crime. Freakin liberals.

Check back in 6 months and watch the drop in crime. Freakin liberals.”

Diego Roswell

How about voter ID cards? Wouldn’t that be more prudent than gun owner cards? Life in the liberal utopia got you down? Buy a gun and you will feel an instant charge of liberty.

Jason Mathis

I’m pretty sure BOTH are equally prudent.
GFR

That’s actually true. I feel much more invested in the political system since I bought a firearm. Not only do you have to jump through a bunch of government hoops all the time, but you have to read up on the gun laws and seek interpretations because they are deliberately vague.

Lo Retta

There once was a girl named Loretta,
Once mugged, she was on a vendetta,
A victim no more,
She’ll settle the score,
Now, mugger, meet Mr. Beretta.
Jim50

I’ll get out of jail before the criminal gets out of Hell.
mike

Guns are never the problem. Liberals and progressives are the problem. Crime rates are lower in states where gun ownership is high.
Marshmont Montgomery

“It’s always a cake walk until you find out your victim isn’t Betty Crocker.” ~ Fanny Forbes Franklen

————– http://911essentials.com
Tom

Good News! The more good guys that are armed, the safer we’ll all be.
hps

So funny the numbers sure don’t add up with the amount of people that got FOID cards and how many guns were registered .. and that does NOT include those that already HAD guns BEFORE the ban was taken down.. and didn’t bother to get FOID cards.. Even though some that get the FOID cards don’t have guns it’s like a gym card just because you have one doesn’t mean you work out.. but they are right .. people MIGHT get a FOID card but that is the END of the regulations they will follow.. no ones business IF you actually HAVE a gun or not.. including the governments..
Sam Colt

Having them have to have a card for purchase and owning a gun and then having to register the gun are both unconstitutional and should be taken to court.

jharry3

Support the NRA and that time will come. They need funding like everyone else who sues the liberal plantation.

Mark Hillyard

“A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.”
Thomas Jefferson