GunsAfter Aurora shooting, lawmakers revive proposal to disarm unlawful gun owners
Illinois revokes thousands of gun licenses every year. But it’s rare for law enforcement to remove firearms from owners barred from having them. Legislators in Illinois are scrambling to address a gap in state law that many have blamed for allowing the gunman who killed five people in Aurora last week to keep his handgun even after he was banned from possessing firearms.
Legislators in Illinois are scrambling to address a gap in state law that many have blamed for allowing the gunman who killed five people in Aurora last week to keep his handgun even after he was banned from possessing firearms.
Kathleen Willis, a Democrat who represents several suburban areas west of Chicago, told The Trace on that legislators are fashioning a bill to ensure law enforcement does a better job of seizing firearms from individuals whose state gun licenses have been revoked. The contours of the legislation were still being hammered out, but Willis said the proposal would likely include funding to hire extra officers to track down the thousands of invalidated license holders who fail to turn over their guns every year.
Where the funding will come from is one of the many questions to be decided over coming weeks. One idea being batted around is to raise the price of a gun license from $10 to $30 or $40, a move that would generate additional revenue but runs the risk of angering gun-rights groups, who are already critical of the licensing system.
The funding issue is likely to be a major sticking point. Past legislative efforts to force the retrieval of guns from revoked license holders deteriorated in large part because of concerns that the added workload would strain cash-strapped police departments. “While law enforcement totally agrees that we need to close this loophole, they need the resources to do it,” Willis said. “That’s why we’re looking to put some money behind it.”
The push has taken off since the Illinois State Police acknowledged that it initially failed to detect 45-year-old Gary Martin’s 1995 conviction for an aggravated assault in Mississippi before issuing him a Firearm Owners Identification card, or FOID, in January 2014. Martin’s felony record surfaced two months later after he applied for a concealed carry permit and submitted his fingerprints to speed up approval of his application.
The discovery of Martin’s conviction prompted state officials to revoke his FOID. But by that time he had already used the license to purchase a Smith & Wesson pistol. On Friday, Martin used that pistol to kill five of his coworkers at the Henry Pratt Co. plant in Aurora. He died during a subsequent shootout with police, which left five officers injured.
