In Illinois, gun owners are required to get a Firearms Owners ID card, or FOID. It’s good for 10 years, and then you need to renew it. But if you don’t renew your card, or if you do something that displeases the powers that be, your FOID is NULL and VOID. Which means you can’t own guns legally.
Cook County police officers have become increasingly worried that when someone’s FOID card is revoked, their guns aren’t instantly confiscated. So they’re doing exactly what gun control advocates have said that registration would never result in — door to door confiscation.
From the Sun Times:
A new Cook County Sheriff’s team is crisscrossing the suburbs to seize guns from thousands of people whose Firearm Owner’s Identification Cards have been revoked.
More than 3,000 people in Cook County have failed to surrender their revoked FOID cards to the state. Sheriff Tom Dart said he thinks many of them continue to possess firearms.
The Chicago Police Department conducts regular missions to recover revoked FOID cards and seize guns from the holders, but there wasn’t a concerted effort to do that in Cook County’s suburbs, Dart said.
“The system is broken,” the sheriff said. “The system revokes cards, but the guns are of no consequence… Our strong hope is that we will eliminate tragedies.”
We’ve said it before and we will say it again — registration only impacts the law abiding. Its raison d’etre is knowing where the firearms are when it’s time to go and get them. Criminals are exempt from the registration requirement due to the illegal nature of their activities, so keeping guns out of the hands of bad guys is a bogus claim when registration advocates try to make it. Registration only applies to the law abiding citizens. Period.
