ISRA Action Alert - SB1966 sitting in Senate Judiciary Committee
In yesterday's House session, SB1966*. passed and went back to the Senate for concurrence on the three amendments.
There was a Senate Judiciary Hearing today but the bill was not called.
This action is requested of you:
Call the Springfield office of your state senator, and ask that they oppose SB1966. You will likely be leaving a message, if the machine is full, try again, please.
If you need to verify who your Illinois State Representative is, please use this lookup at the Illinois State Board of Elections.
If you remember who your representative is, but don't know the phone number to call, you can use the above lookup tool or quickly find your legislator on the ILGA website. Representatives here, Senators here.
This final week of scheduled session, we must have maximum effort from everyone.
Your ISRA Lobbying Team will be there fighting for You.
If you are receiving this alert and are not an ISRA member, please join and help support the fight to keep your 2nd Amendment Rights.
Richard A. Pearson
ISRA Executive Director
*Here's a refresher, reminding us why this is a bad bill, it's not just the price of the FOID card or required fingerprinting.
The bill SB1966 would:
Criminalize private transfers, with violations being punished as a Class 4 felony.
Require the recipient of a firearm gifted by a family member to call into Illinois State Police within 60 days to run a background check on themselves, even though they must already hold a FOID.
Mandate FOID applicants submit fingerprints, including for renewals, which would not add anything of investigative value.
Increase new FOID processing time from one calendar month to thirty business days, which can span more than six weeks.
Reduce the duration of the FOID from ten years to five while also increasing the application fee from $10 to $20, resulting in a significant increase in the cost to maintain a FOID for the same amount of time.
Require FOID applicants pay all costs for fingerprinting and processing the background check, totaling around $150 on top of the application fee.
Prohibit those with a revoked FOID from transferring firearms to someone in the same household, which would create confusion in determining the owner of the firearms and would take away the right to self-defense from individuals due to the alleged actions of someone else in their household.
Require the owner of the seized firearms to petition the court to have them transferred to a third party.
Cap the fee of the required FFL transfer at $10, and no FFL will perform such a task for $10.
Cap the fee of the required fingerprints at $30, there are no vendors who will do this.
As all firearms transfers would have to go through an FFL, existing Illinois Medical Marijuana patients would be unable to purchase a firearm, nor would they be able to have the FFL return a firearm to them in the event of a failed transfer to someone else. This is due to the questions on the ATF 4473 form.
While ISRA has no position on the recreational marijuana issue currently before the Illinois Legislature, any future legal recreational users would also be unable to purchase firearms.
Check out ISRA's website at
www.isra.org! Tell us what you think!