The Illinois State Police have stumbled badly in their efforts to approve instructors for the new Illinois Concealed Carry law.

With over 1,000 applications sitting in their offices, they’ve approved twenty-three as of a moment ago.  Less than two dozen – and none in the last week!

They’ve approved exactly zero courses as well, so the less-than-two-dozen instructors have literally nothing they can teach.

People are beginning to ask if the Illinois State Police should be renamed the Incompetent State Police.

If they cannot handle approving 1,000 instructors in a timely manner, how in the heck are they going to handle the anticipated 300,000 applicants who are expected to apply within the first thirty to sixty days once applications are available?

At this rate, they aren’t; it’s going to be an epic failure by the Illinois State Police.

Here’s what we recommend to the Illinois State Police:

1.  Get rid of the lawyers in your legal department or ride herd on them.  They are the primary obstacle to common sense.  The attorneys there are so risk adverse that they have paralyzed the entire process.

Now, our other recommendations:

2.  Any approved curriculum should be able to be taught by any instructor.

3.  Eliminate the requirements that have been artificially imposed by this emergency rule-making that aren’t in the Act itself.

Examples you ask?  Requiring prints be submitted by Live Scan vendors instead of allowing local law enforcement to take prints either electronically or on print cards.   The Live Scan fingerprinting, at fees of $55-85 per set, is unacceptable, particularly for poor Illinoisans. Even worse, there are no Live Scan vendors in a vast majority of Illinois counties!

Another?  The ISP are requiring instructors have and maintain a concealed carry license to teach.  Nowhere in the law is this required.  ISP must scrap these artificial obstacles

3.  Additional instructors need to be approved IMMEDIATELY.

4.  Course approvals need to be granted IMMEDIATELY, for both generic 8- and 16-hour classes that are approved as well as other approved classes.

There’s only so much range space in IL and these approved instructors, teaching approved courses, need to get busy to handle a quarter-million people seeking training in the coming four months.

Under more minor points, but significant nevertheless:

5.  Lawyers and law enforcement officers should be able to teach the use of force and current law under the supervision of a certified instructor.

6.  The recently released mandates on curriculum, not included in the law itself, need to be scrapped.

17 thoughts on “Dear Illinois State Police: Here’s what we recommend…”
  1. If NOAH had these persons helping to build the arc it would look like a glass bottom boat…without the glass. The saying “got to make the job last” or is it got to out last the job ?

  2. The isp are the most incompetent bunch of people in all of law enforecement from the top to the bottom! The top dosen’t do there required mandates. The bottom officers are to busy harrassing otherwise law abiding citizens for loud exhaust or failure to buckle your seatbelt. I’m sorry but there are way more important things in society for them to be doing!!!
    Havean forbid they would do what they are getting paid to do. Looks like they leave the bulk of what needs to be done to the city or county police forces.

  3. Have the ISP lawyers considered that delaying implementation of this law will incur liability?

    Imagine an IL citizen with an out of state CCW permit, who wants an IL CCW permit but can’t get it. Imagine this person getting assaulted and not being able to defend himself/herself because the ISP hasn’t approved an adequate number of instructors or any curricula?

    Who do you think will be held liable?

    1. I’am not a lawyer and don’t play one on TV but I don’t think you will get any where trying to hold the Il. po po liable.

  4. Some of us openly opposed this law in part because of foolishness like this.
    Others celebrated the “historic day” it passed.

    You yourself,John, stifled dissent and now you want to complain about results of the law you refused to stand up against? Seriously?

    You wanted your precious “training” MANDATE and you got it. The CRUX with the lawyers is that they want to push liability onto the trainers so they don’t carry any themselves for approving the trainers and the curriculum. And you think they are just gonna let you guys off the hook the legislators sunk into your jaw when they reeled you in to this debacle? Really?

    Hey, I agree you “trainers” are getting HOSED but its your own fault. You had a chance to oppose this before it came to be but you sold out for the thirty pieces of silver if nothing more than for your precious “preemption”. All you accomplished was giving MORE authority to the state government over everyone’s rights. You got SUCKERED.

    And you will forever have to live with that.
    Enjoy having liability on your shoulders as you are then forced into huge insurance costs to cover that liability. And as you pass THAT coming cost onto people you train you can know that your own choices led to it. Also, when that person too poor to meet the money demanded (as a result if your inability to LISTEN to that point prior to the law) is accosted raped robbed or even murdered cuz they couldn’t carry cuz they couldn’t AFFORD your precious training costs – you have to live with that too.

    Good luck sleeping at night.

    1. Told you so:

      Guess what, sir… The NRA, GSL and ISRA had *zero* role in the drafting this bill. Madigan wrote it and gave it to Brandon to put on the floor of the House and told us to take it or we could have Kwame’s may-issue bill.

      But don’t let the facts get in the way of your grand proclamations.

      Yes, calmer heads wanted to see a shall issue bill pass, as opposed to being saddled with Raoul and Kwame’s “may issue” bill.

      We took it, no thanks to you. With “help” like yours, we’d be enjoying a very restrictive “may issue” carry law and the ISP wouldn’t be issuing licenses until 2023.

      John

    2. You shoulda stood up and said go ahead and do shall issue then. Go for it. But you didn’t. ISRA decided to support it and the rest of you just went neutral – and I LET FACTS GET IN THE WAY?

      Republicans could have voted against it on principal but they DIDN’T. Why? Who told them to vote for it? Oh yeah the “pro” gun folks advocacy did or at least didnt tell them to oppose it. The very least it could have made dems OWN it al. But nooooo.

      You can try to rewrite history Jon and you can ignore the reality that you and yours not only went soft but also ACTIVELY stifled those who actually DID have the courage to call this debacle exactly what it was AND IS.

      Lol@ had no role in this. C’mon John Todd just wrote a day or so again that “WE” are winning the legislative battle. Sheesh – try to have it both ways much? Or are you just calling Todd a liar? Which is it?

      Here’s a hint – when you OPPOSE something you DON’T HELP implement it. You let the fools OWN their foolishness. But that’s NOT what’s happening us it? Nope, instead those who fence sit now join in the foolishness and themselves look like fools.

      The WORSE the government screws this up the BETTER and STRONGER the case in court gets. So WHY help them implement it better” why hold their hands? The only REAL and TRUTHFUL answer is to KEEP it ambiguous so the same old game is played some more.

      Trust us 997 is it man. We got this. Get behind this and it’ll pass. Uh huh. Pay NO attention to the CC legislation! Back 997!

      Imagine if all the calls were for THAT instead of 997. But that woulda took direction from “leadership to do so. Hilariously you mighta got 997 had the directed a actually Ben told to do so.

      Remember when folks were told open carry wouldn’t be thrown under the bus? Remember when folks wanted to be part of the process but were kept out of the hidden ballroom deals?

      Chickens came home to roost and they will continue to do so. Whether you want to admit it or not. Arguing AGAINST constitutional carry as if its a bad thing is what the NRA DID. And you can’t change that now,Jon. Stifling the folks who spoke up about that in the heat of the debate is something you cannot change now either. You did what you did and nothing improves until you are honest about it.

    3. Oh and I believe the 7th would have something to say about that 2023 claim you just made – but live in that dream world if you must. You got your preemption you were willing to sacrifice everything for. How’s that panacea working out for ya?

  5. Oh and I fully expect a Hillary clintonesque- “what difference, at this point, does it make? Reaction. It’s the law now and we just have to deal with it, huh?

    Uh huh.

  6. Let’s face it. The ISP takes its direction from the Governor’s office. The ISP attorneys are surely political hacks that owe their cushy jobs to the Governor and his cronies. These attorneys didn’t take a job with the ISP because they scored highest on the Bar Exam. The took the job because they aren’t too damn bright and they didn’t want to have to work for a living. Now that they’ve been give a task with no real persuasion from the boss, their incompetence is showing. The best of any profession works for the private sector (that’s where they are paid more because they can produce more), not for the government. If this task had been given to the private sector, permits would have been rolling out in 90 days. The private sector would recognize $4.5M in revenue over the next 60 days for selling $150 pieces of paper to 300,000 law abiding citizens. A private sector firm would go out and hire the right people to get the money rolling in ASAP. As a business owner, I would love a chance to make $450K profit in 150 days.

    1. Agreed. But your math is broken.

      300k x 150 permits = $45 Million

      The bigger problem is that there’s only a finite number of ranges, instructors and timeslots for training peeps.

      Take GSL Defense Training, for example: We have 9 16-hour classes scheduled for IL next year. If we pack each one with fifty students (about 10 larger than we like to run in a class, but then again, we’ve got 12-16 instructors at any given class), that’s still less than 500 people all year long.

      300,000 people / 500 = There would need to be 600 instructor groups/teams/instructors running a similar number of students through over the course of next year to train them all.

      Oh yeah, and these folks are going to want trained *yesterday*.

      There aren’t that many ranges & instructors out there. It’s got the potential to be ugly.

      John

    2. Oops on the math error. I still find it hard to believe the politicians wouldn’t want the cash to fill their coffers.

  7. Political pressure and legal action is about all we can do in the short term. I’ve called my reps.

    In the long run, we improve the ISP and the law by replacing the governor and as many Madigan/Cullerton minions as possible.

    Also, in the next election, we need to hold Frerichs and some of the other “squishy” reps accountable.

  8. its always the ‘next’ election about everything..problem is …fixes never work and politicians usually remain the same…you can not fix what is broke within the same system….with the same politicians…when we play by their rules or laws we lose…NULLIFY and refuse to obey…are starters till you can get a state militia reformed and then you will have legal’power’ to remove political obstacles…imho

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