Sunday, February 9, 2014

Public Act 98-0600

Please understand, I am not a lawyer. While I am willing to comment on the law, I would recommend very highly that you not rely on my comments to keep you out of jail. The law as written is very poorly constructed and with a lot of potential nightmares hidden in it.

P.A. 98-0600 modified some provisions of P.A. 98-0063 that created the FCCA. Some people on gun forums are calling it a "trailer bill". Apparently to show they are in on the lingo.

It modifies some things here and there within various state laws, including the FCCA.

Section 5 amends The Private Detective, Private Alarm, Private Security, Fingerprint Vendor, and Locksmith Act of 2004 apparently to allow law enforcement agencies to do fingerprinting for applicants. I am not sure what benefit there is to this, but I guess it creates some amount of competition to the commercial fingerprinting companies, and maybe allows people who live in rural areas options for fingerprinting they would not otherwise have.

Section 10 makes some more changes to the FOID Card Act. It clarified that LE officials and school administrators have a lot of power to ban you from owning firearms just by claiming you are some kind of threat. No proof is actually required, although there is some language that appears to require it. Nor is there any kind of requirement that school administrators or cops have any training whatsoever in this area.

Section 15 modifies the Firearm Concealed Carry Act Sections 10, 15, 20, 40, 75, and 80.

Section 10 of the FCCA was modified to clarify and strengthen the so called "duty to disclose" requirement in the FCCA. If a cop asks. You have to tell them you have a concealed firearm if you are a licensee or non-resident carrying under subsection (e) of section 40. It also includes others who might be in a vehicle as being required to disclose. Some people have made a big deal of this. It seems to me to be in line with other states, and in fact somewhat less offensive than other states. It just does not bother me any.

Section 15 of the FCCA was amended to make some minor administrative type changes.

Section 20 of the FCCA was amended to make the Concealed Carry Licensing Review Board part of the ISP. Probably a good thing to specify that. There were some other changes made that appear to be minor in nature.

Section 40 of the FCCA subsection (e) was changed. This is the part of the law that allows car carry by non-residents.
(2) is eligible to carry a firearm in public under the laws of his or her state or territory of residence, as evidenced by the possession of a concealed carry license or permit issued by his or her state of residence, if applicable.
The part I bolded was added. Some have claimed this means only people that have been issued a license from their home state qualify. But, it does not actually say that. A lot of states allow permit less carry in public in some fashion. That would appear to be covered by the "if applicable" phrase. OTOH, who knows what cops and the courts will think it means.

Section 75 of the FCCA covers applicant training. This section was changed so that corrections officers are not required to take any training, among other minor changes. It also gives former cops and corrections officers 8 hours training credit ( a la the 8 hour military credit) but makes it hard enough to claim the credit that few will bother.

Section 80  of the FCCA was re-titled "Certified firearms instructors" from "Firearms instructor training". It also allows for non-residents to be instructors, sort of. It is not clear to me that they actually fixed the issue WRT non-resident instructors. They still have to acquire a FCCL according to the rules created by the ISP and they can't get a license unless they are residents of Hawaii.

Section 99. Effective date. This Act takes effect upon becoming law.

My FCCA blog

No comments: