McHenry Times

State Rep. Steve Reick (R-Woodstock) is opposed to a proposed fingerprint requirement on FOID cards as a way of curbing gun violence across the state.

“You want to do away with gun violence in Illinois, one of the best ways to do it is to enforce current law, which is to arrest and prosecute straw buyers,” Reick said during House floor debate. “Those guns being bought out of the back of someone’s car were bought legally by someone that had no intention of doing anything but handing it off to somebody else.”

Reick said he’s grown tired of seeing the Second Amendment rights of legal gun owners trampled over in the battle to curb violence.  

“You go to a crime scene and what happens is you find a gun. You know where that gun was bought, find out who bought it, prosecute them, send them to jail,” he said. “Don’t go sending innocent, law-abiding gun owners halfway across the county to get a fingerprint.”

Fellow Republican lawmaker Rep. C.D. Davidsmeyer (R-Jacksonville) is also pushing for changes to the system amid reports it’s now taking months to process new FOID applications.

“They’ve been going on for a long time; they got incredibly worse during COVID-19,” he said during a recent news conference on the issue. “I Googled the other day ‘how long does it take to get a FOID card?’ and it came up 127 days.”

Davidsmeyer said he hears nearly every day from frustrated constituents who are unable to get a response one way or the other from government officials regarding their applications for legal gun ownership.

“I have constituents that I've helped get a FOID card that have been waiting for 13 months,” he said. “It is absolutely crazy.”