Lake County Gazette

New legislation has been introduced that will help gun owners deal with issues concerning their Firearm Owners Identification or FOID.

State Rep. Tom Weber (R-Lake Villa) introduced the legislation to counter the delays that FOID cardholders often experience. Normally, the processing of FOID cards can be slow and delays are to be expected, but the pandemic has made things worse.

According to Weber, the COVID-19 pandemic brought an increase in FOID applications and because there are already normal delays to the process, every application is now being set back further down the list.

Reports say that the ISP has a backlog of almost 200,000 FOID and CCL requests. New card applications take over three months of processing while renewals take longer. Weber is worried that law-abiding gun owners could be found breaking the law by holding onto an invalid FOID card through no fault of their own and he wants to avoid that.

It’s the reason why Weber proposed legislation wherein gun owners can apply for a FOID card that will be permanent and not open to renewal. This way, gun owners will no longer have to wait for their FOID card to be renewed.