9
by Hazborgufen
The new rules are pretty awesome for me here in Illinois. We, surprisingly, made SBRs legal a couple years back. The law requires that we have a C&R License, though it does not limit the age of the firearm we can own. Unfortunately, the ATF ruled that C&R Licenses can't be possessed by a trust and it didn't matter if all the trustees have C&Rs. Thus it refused to issue stamps to trusts from Illinois meaning we needed to get CLEO signoff.
I was fortunate in that my CLEO was willing to sign. It took about three months before he would though. I sent copies of my licences (FOID, FCCL, and C&R), a copy of the revised law with the relevant section highlighted, two letters from members of the state legislature (one Senator and one Representative) that they had sent to the ATF to clarify that despite the C&R requirement the intent of the law was to allow modern rifles as well. He consulted the state police, the ATF, and who knows what other agencies. The commander at the police department was my contact. He's a gun guy who even wants suppressors to be legal in my state so he was very sympathetic in my goal to get the signature, but he said the chief wanted to be absolutely certain that everything was legal. After several weeks of back and forth, I contacted my state's NRA-ILA lobbyist who told me he'd look into it. A week later I got a call from the commander saying that he was writing a memo for the department about the legality of SBRs and that I was going to get my signature.
So I was lucky to have a CLEO who was willing to sign after being assured of the legality by a commander who supported my goal and an NRA lobbyist advocated on my behalf. That's a TON of hands in the pot and legwork on my part that would be overwhelming for most people. I had access to a huge amount of resources that the average person wouldn't. And all of it would have been for naught had my CLEO been an anti.
So ditching the CLEO signature requirement is huge. That was the number 1 purpose of trusts anyway. Sure sharing ownership of your NFA goodies is a wonderful thing, but that always seemed secondary to bypassing the signature. Besides, you can still get a trust so there you go. I know of several people who have CLEOs that refused to sign. Now they are good to go. That's awesome.