Todd Vandermyde gave me the lowdown last night and he posted some additional stuff this morning on where things are at with the Illinois State Police on the implementation of the new Firearms Concealed Carry Act.

What’s happening?

Todd says they’ve completely cut off communications with him. He was offering constructive criticism of some of their proposals, but the lawyers at Illinois State Police aren’t interested. Bless their hearts.

They – as a bunch of non-gun owners – think they know how to do this and they keep stepping in one pooh-filled hole after another. Furthermore, they don’t seem all that concerned because after all, they’ve satisfied the legal requirement that they *start* to approve instructors and courses by September 7th.

Well the people at the Illinois State Police started to feel the heat. They are now bantering big legal words as to why they “can’t” take constructive criticism from us: It’s ex parte communications.

Oh, for heaven’s sake.

We tried to assist them to help them avoid mistakes and get this show on the road, but they aren’t interested.

So we’ve turned to political and public pressure.

Guns Save Life urged friends and members to begin contacting legislators two days ago and we’re already seeing positive results from this. These legislators are calling the Illinois State Police and not all of them are going away with the standard, “we’re working as fast as we can” brush-off.

There’s also been some publicity in the mainstream media (believe it or not!) on how inept the Illinois State Police has been thus far.

Yesterday, there were some newspaper and radio reports.

UPDATE: Here’s the TV report…

On WCIA Channel 3 in Champaign, they had a wonderful story last night and today – including an interview with yours truly. The bottom line: If the state police are having real problems approving 1,000 instructors, what’s going to happen in January when they have a *quarter million* applications?

The reporter lambasted them for having approved less than two dozen of the thousand instructor applicants, including none in the last week.

So, ladies and gentlemen, keep calling your reps and senators. Tell them to dig a little deeper when they are brushed off with the old “we’re going as fast as we can” bravo sierra.

Today, Todd spoke with a couple of key politicians after they had returned from a trip and they were a little “concerned”. They realized ISP had fed them a shovel-full of used cow food before these men had left for their trip and they weren’t happy about it.

These reps, Costello and Phelps, are going to have a meeting with the ISP boys and girls before the end of the week.

Apparently, later in the morning, they sent Todd an update.

In short, the ISP plans to make a batch posting of at least a couple of hundred approved instructors, perhaps more, at the end of the month. They will also list approved courses at the same time.

The reason given for waiting another ten days before they do anything?

They don’t want to be accused of playing favorites among courses, instructors, etc.