The Illinois State Police say they are continuing to reduce the FOID Card backlog.
ISP says they have lowered the backlog over the last few months through the additional hiring of staff and overhauling the entire FOID system. Backlogs have allegedly been reduced by 89% for renewals and 75% for new applications.
ISP Director Brendan Kelly says its been a challenging year with such an influx of people wanting a FOID Card or Concealed Carry License: “We need to make sure the processing time for the applications is timely. We are moving towards that by getting more and more efficient. Rather than making it more cumbersome and focused on bureaucracy, we are prioritizing safety. Really our mission is to make easy for the good guys and hard for the bad guys. For new FOID Cards, we want to get it down to under 30 days and for renewals to under 60 days, and we are moving closer and closer to that. I suspect we should be there by the end of the year to be able to have renewals mostly under that mark.”
Kelly says that new legislation passed by the General Assembly this past summer helped offer significant revisions to the FOID Card process and streamlined many process in the system. In a press release on Thursday, ISP says that enforcement details of revoked FOID Cards have successfully brought over 1,300 people in compliance and over 10,000 firearms dispositions accounted for over the last two years.