Three areas marked prohibited by board, rules for others to be determined
SUN CITY – With the Illinois Family and Personal Protection Act set to take effect in January, Illinois citizens can apply for concealed carry permits next month. Those trained and qualified should be able to obtain permits by April.
The bill’s passing set the stage for Sun City to decide how to handle guns in the community. SSCAH Board President Bonnie Bayser said this fall the board would make a priority of setting concealed carry policy and establishing communication with law enforcement before the law takes effect.
At the Dec. 4 Committee of the Whole Meeting, a vote was passed to ban concealed weapons from association-owned common areas within Sun City, including Prairie and Meadowview Lodges and the Millgrove Woodshop.
Sun City Community Association Executive Director Lauren Lee said these areas will feature State of Illinois-issued signs to make residents and visitors aware of the restrictions.
“What we [SCCAH] are trying to do is work through the attorney and possibly through the police department on getting some guidelines to help us on how that would be enforced, other than signage,” she said.
Huntley police will be the enforcers in the case of any violations, but Sgt. Michael Hewitt said enforcement protocol is another area that needs sorting through.
“It’s going to be the application of which statute – is it going to be an offense under the concealed carry act or is it going to be an offense that is generated that, if you have a gun, you can’t come here and it becomes part of the criminal code which would be trespass,” he said.
Additional matters to be determined include other potential areas within Sun City where concealed carry might be banned, such as outdoor playing fields. Lee and the board were hoping for community input at a Dec. 16 town hall meeting. The meeting came an hour after a noon Committee of the Whole meeting, but Lee said there was no vote regarding concealed carry on the COTW agenda at press time.
Sun City resident Jim Darow objected to what he called a failure on the board’s part to alert residents that they were looking into the issue of concealed carry and seeking information from law enforcement and lawyers. He said the board did not present their findings or rationale behind this decision to residents at the Dec. 4 meeting.
“I would think that the board would say to the community ‘We have the concealed carry issue to discuss; we are in the process of obtaining information relative to that,'” he said.
Lee – who came to Sun City in November from Westbrook Village, an active adult community in Peoria, Ariz. – has experience on handling concealed carry laws in senior communities. Arizona does not require licenses for adults to carry handguns whether the firearms are in plain sight or concealed.
“We had just posted it by the state regulations and state law,” she said of concealed carry signs in Westbrook Village. “All our buildings were posted for – our lodges and our recreation centers. So we didn’t impact a lot as far as the outside areas but definitely as far as bringing weapons into a building, all our buildings were posted.”
Hewitt said with time, Illinois police will grow familiar in handling concealed carry cases, and he expects the surge in attention the law is currently receiving to fade.
“I’ve heard people converse about other states and typically there’s a huge spike in licenses issued and then it kind of levels out because the novelty’s gone,” Hewitt said.
