concealed carry of guns has quiet first year; expansion sought - Chicago Tribune
Keith Hearn was getting out of his car in front of his home in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood when, as he tells it, police pulled up and told him he had committed a minor traffic offense.
Hearn, 34, has a concealed-carry license and said he voluntarily told the officers he had a handgun on him. Nonetheless, he said officers arrested him and took him to their station, claiming his gun was partly showing. After checking, he said, police found the concealed-carry law allows a gun to be "mostly" concealed, and let him go without charges.
"I was disgusted," Hearn said. "Why was I arrested, handcuffed in front of my neighborhood, when I didn't break any laws?"
Hearn is among about 92,000 people who got licenses to carry a hidden gun in public last year in Illinois — the last state in the union to legalize "concealed carry," as it's called. Since it went into effect more than a year ago, the law has prompted neither the rash of shootings that opponents feared, nor a wave of crimes prevented through the intervention of armed citizens.
Instead, there are ongoing disputes over who should be allowed to carry a gun, and where. Those battles are being played out in the courts and occasionally, on the streets, as in Hearn's account, which Chicago police would not comment on or confirm.
Some citizens who were turned down for concealed-carry permits say they are being denied their constitutional right by a secretive state licensing board. Yet some law enforcement officials warn that dangerous people are being allowed to walk around with loaded weapons.
Problems have occasionally cropped up involving concealed carriers. In July, a man with a concealed-carry permit tried to foil an armed robbery by shooting at the fleeing robber in Crestwood, forcing a police officer to duck for cover, according to Tribune reports. No one was hurt, but firearms trainers said gun carriers who try to intervene when police are already on the scene can pose a serious danger. In another incident, a member of the military who had a license to carry a gun shot and wounded an armed man who had fired into a crowd on Chicago's Far South Side.
But in general, there have been relatively few problems implementing the law,according to several law enforcement officials.
Fred Hayes, chief of police in Elwood and president of the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police, said he was "pleasantly surprised" that the rollout has gone so quietly. Hayes previously opposed the law but said fears of increased shootings have "not materialized."
For years, the association opposed the measure but chose to support its passage in 2013. Attitudes toward the law were split geographically, Hayes said, with downstate officers more supportive, and those in the Chicago area more opposed, due largely to the differing amount of gun crime in each region.
Arlington Heights Police Chief Gerald Mourning also said he had expected an adjustment period with the new law, but that problems have been virtually non-existent.
"We have dealt with it so infrequently that we simply haven't had any difficulties. I am surprised by it. I thought for sure we would encounter issues on a more regular basis," Mourning said. "It has not been an issue for us at all in terms of confrontations or misunderstandings."
In Aurora, police Cmdr. Paul Nelson said officers routinely ask during traffic stops if a subject possesses a firearm. If so, the officer will then request to see the concealed-carry license to determine if the weapon is legal, and then ask the subject not to touch the weapon during the traffic stop.
"When you look at it, we were the last of 50 states to implement this law. We act like this was some big new deal. In reality, everyone else had been doing it for many years, and there just haven't been any problems," Nelson said. "There was no reason for us to expect that it would be different in Illinois."
Martha Rosenberg, of the National Gun Victims Action Council, said the effect of the law was not as bad as she feared, but had a different theory as to why.
"Even though, legally, people can bring firearms out, there's a lot of places where they can't bring it," she said. "So the law is going well because the carriers aren't all over the place."
Gun advocates see the matter just the opposite way. Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, said concealed carry helped Chicago see its lowest homicide rate in nearly 50 years last year. He argued for expanding the law to allow guns on public transportation, for instance, to reduce the number of robberies there.
Under the law, there are more than 25 types of establishments where guns are banned, including schools, government buildings, airports, parks, bars, casinos, zoos and libraries. Businesses that don't want guns must post a state police "no guns allowed" sign.
The most active battleground over gun rights is in the courts, where about 300 lawsuits have been filed against the state by people denied licenses. Some applications submitted by those who have sued have been sent back to the state for review and been awarded, while others are pending.
Previously, denials had to be appealed in court. As a result of changes to the process made last summer, applicants are notified of a police objection against them and can appeal directly to the Concealed Carry Licensing Review Board, which decides whether to award the license.
Under the law, county sheriffs, state's attorneys, local police and the attorney general can raise objections "based on reasonable suspicion" if an applicant appears to be a danger to himself or herself or others. The board reviews these objections and makes a final decision. Convicted felons and convicted domestic abusers are also denied the license.
Attorney Joe Obenberger represents several plaintiffs challenging their denials. He said many cases are based on arrests, not convictions, so the applicants should be presumed innocent. He also noted that the review board is made up mainly of law enforcement officials.
Despite the rule changes, Obenberger says applicants still aren't given the evidence against them beyond a summary objection and can't get an in-person hearing.
"Good and honorable, decent people are being denied left and right," he said.
The board has considered about 3,100 police objections and denied licenses to about 2,400 of them.
Claudia Castro, legal counsel for the board, said things are running much better since the rule changes.
"The board is much less conservative now," Castro said. "I think with time and experience and becoming more familiar with the applicants, they are becoming more flexible with their decision-making."
That board will now need to be reconstituted, though, as Gov. Bruce Rauner did not retain its members after taking office.
One group also trying to assess the impact of the new law is the business community.
Members of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce haven't run into any major problems with the law, spokeswoman Andree Dolan said.
Still, some local Chicago businesses feared that posting the sign would alienate potential customers or make the community uncomfortable. Eric Williams, owner of the Silver Room in Chicago, said he was hesitant about posting the no-carry sign in the window, despite not supporting the law.
"You have a big picture of a gun on the door," he said. "I don't want it there. Plus, I think it is silly to think that someone who has a concealed gun will not bring it into a store because of a tiny sign."
Chris Connelly, the manager of Reckless Records in Chicago's Wicker Park, pasted the sign in the window of his business immediately after the law was passed. He said that in Scotland, where he is from, guns hardly exist.
"Daily life really shouldn't involve becoming Clint Eastwood all of a sudden," Connelly said. "There have been no issues at all and zero reactions. For 99.9 percent of my customers, it doesn't affect their life."
Gun advocates hope to change the law to cut back on the number of places where guns are prohibited.
There may be support for tightening the law from the governor's mansion. During the campaign, Rauner reportedly said he supported the law, but it was too confusing for gun owners to know where they couldn't carry a gun.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart warned that dangerous people are getting guns. His office objected to more than 2,000 applicants, about half of whom had arrests for domestic abuse or orders of protection, and 18 murder suspects arrested but not convicted.
Dart called for having the law specify grounds for objections, such as prior arrests, but is not optimistic about changing the law. As a former lawmaker himself, he said, legislators don't want to revisit the issue because it's too controversial.
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