Sheriff Wants Task Forces To Collect Guns When FOID Cards Revoked

MAYWOOD, IL — Posing with guns his office has collected from people whose firearm owner's licenses have been revoked, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart proposed new legislation Friday he said would close loopholes in state gun laws. The sheriff of the state's largest county, where last year 3,610 FOID cards were revoked, said current law relies on an intentionally flawed "honor system," where people who have lost their right to carry a firearm are sent a letter and expected to handle the disposition of the firearm voluntarily.

"This was by design. People want ineffective gun laws, we know that. That's been going on forever," Dart said. "And what better way to have an ineffective gun law than when people are being revoked, you send them a letter in the mail, and you expect that somehow these guns are mysteriously going to arrive at law enforcement offices, they're going to arrive, somehow, at a legal owner's house? Of course everyone knows that's not going to occur."

The law would set up countywide law enforcement task forces devoted to revocation enforcement and headed by sheriff's offices with police and prosecutors. The sheriff suggested it could be financed by an increase in the FOID card application fee from $10 to $15 or other fees.

Under Dart's proposal, the task forces would receive information from the state police Firearm Transfer Inquiry Program, or FTIP, which records how many times a person with a revoked FOID card has tried to buy a firearm within 24 hours of revocation. He said local law enforcement is currently unable to access any information about how many guns are in a person's house.

Dart unveiled the plan at a press conference Friday, the same day state police revealed more than 75 percent of gun owners fail to complete required firearm disposition records and a week after five people were killed at Henry Pratt Manufacturing by a man whose FOID card had been revoked since 2014.

Dart said he believed the political climate is ripe to "finally end a system [that] is truly, truly insane," which he said presently "does nothing to get the guns away from people, it gets cards away from people. Who would ever think that's OK? Nobody would."

The sheriff said his plan would increase transparency by centralizing the responsibility for revocation enforcement in each county and revealing how many homes of gun owners with revoked cards have been visited by police. He also suggested the increased information sharing would increase officer safety by giving police an idea whether or not they are visiting a home equipped with a significant stockpile of weapons.

"Talk about dangerous for the officer," Dart said. "But then dangerous for that community — that someone had their card revoked and they're sitting on an arsenal."

The Cook County Sheriff's Office formed a specialized unit of to recover weapons in 2013 and has seized about 1,000 firearms. Dart said it consisted of about four or five people who are able to visit about half of the homes of revoked cardholders on its list.

But even under Dart's proposal, he admitted, there is no way to know whether all the guns in possession of someone with a revoked card have been legally accounted for, even if they do file a required firearm disposition record with ISP or turn over a weapon to law enforcement. The process would remain voluntary.

The gun recovery teams rely on the cooperation of the gun owner or their family to turn over all weapons after a revocation, whether caused by an order of protection, a determination the person is dangerous or the terms of another court order.

"We tried to get a search warrant yesterday for a situation with a person with guns and the state's attorney's office wouldn't give it to us they said we didn't have enough probable cause," Dart said.

Dart said he was unsure how much additional funding would be required for his office to be able to visit the home of every person with a revoked card and was not optimistic about increased resources from the state to cover the cost. His task force proposal would redirect a portion of existing state FOID fees.

Dart said there was a broad agreement in Springfield that people with revoked FOID cards should not have guns and blamed the National Rifle Association for restricting law enforcement access to firearm purchasing information. Dart said he would lobby vigorously for sharing information from the FTIP database.

"If you don't agree to do that, then let's just be clear, what you're saying is you have no issues with people being innocently slaughtered. You have no problem with that. Let's just make that clear," Dart said. "This isn't some nuanced thing where let's get into the weeds on the Second Amendment. No. This is something where law enforcement is using it for a limited purpose to attempt to find out how many guns are in someone's house who shouldn't have any guns there."

Read more: Majority Of Revoked FOID Cards Not Returned: State Police