WHM--welcome. Definitely get your FOID. Everyone in a shooter's family should have one. Dad made my little sister get one, even though she really doesn't have much interest in shooting, when he realized that if she were pulled over in his truck and the officer (for whatever reason) saw a shotgun shell she could be arrested. Be ready to wait. Maybe one of these days the St. Louis-area THR contingent can meet at the Belleville gun show and have lunch.
Oh, and your friend--assuming he got caught with the gun--could be toast. A lot of police would not push the issue unless he failed the attitude test, but they certainly could. He's committing a crime.
Look at joining
http://www.concealcarry.org or
http://www.gunssavelife.com before you think about ISRA. The ISRA does not have the good of all gun owners at heart. You, for instance, want a handgun, so they could care less about you.
Quickdraw--wanna do something about it? The Champaign County Rifle Association meets in Champaign the 2nd Tuesday of every month. Shoot me a PM if you'd like to meet me there next month. It's a little easier if you "know" someone in the crowd. Their meetings are actually very interesting affairs--last month (which I missed) they had a survivor of the Bataan Death March lecture on what it was like. He was a metal fabricator with no rifle training who was handed a 1903 Springfield still in the cosmoline when the Japanese invaded.
Doug, you got screwed.
Gwinn's Guns and Tackle did not process applications that way. It's certainly not a requirement. Those guys clearly care more about their own convenience than doing the job you hired them to do. By all means, just send it in yourself. It's not nearly as hard as people expect. Failing that, you can have it all done at any gun show.
From what I'm reading from the state law, it legal to walk down the street with a unloaded gun in a carrying case
Well, the good news is it's perfectly legal. I do it myself on occasion. Go to
http://www.gunssavelife.com and click on "Six Seconds From Safety" for the details.
The bad news is that although it's legal, we're still in the process of convincing ambitious prosecutors of that fact. There have been four cases on the subject and we've won them all so far. To be legal, you must have a FOID card and
either:
Break the gun down so it is non-functioning,
or
Put it somewhere inaccessible,
or
Put it, unloaded, into a case, "box, shipping container, or other container." Essentially, if it is contained and completely surrounded by something and unloaded, you're legal. The ammunition can be anywhere you want except loaded into the gun; I keep a loaded magazine in the case with a semi-automatic. Holsters do not count as "containers" because they don't "seal the gun in" thus it could still convince you to massacre The Children.
Hey! There's Miss Demeanors!