A new hope for common sense gun laws in Illinois

While the 96^th Illinois General Assembly has been occupied with the Blagojevich impeachment, and the legislative agenda has been dominated mostly by the economy and the state’s budgetary ills, the fate of a number of proposed bills in the House may signal the beginning of a shift in Illinois gun control policy away from a politically oriented and now quasi-unconstitutional restrictive regime toward a reasonably expansive policy framework of Heller-centric common sense gun laws.

House Bill 182, which seeks to amend the Criminal Code of 1961, passed the House on April 3^rd by a vote of 72 to 45. The bill, introduced by Rep. John E. Bradley (D-117), would add “dwelling(s)” to the list of exempted places where law-abiding citizens are restricted from carrying firearms. Current legislation includes “abode(s)” as one of several exempted spaces, but Illinois case law rigidly interprets the meaning of “abode(s)” as an individual’s actual home, and only grants exemption to those individuals who live there. Rep. Bradley’s amendment would allow for exemption while carrying a firearm at or in the home of a friend or family member.

Another positive step in the direction of common sense gun regulation was the defeat of House Bill 845, first introduced for consideration in early February by Rep. Edward J. Acevedo (D-2nd). The bill proposed amending the Criminal Code of 1961 with provisions that would grant authorities the power to revoke a citizen's FOID card in the event of a failure to report a loss or theft of a handgun within 72 hours to a local law enforcement agency. The bill also deemed a gun owner's failure to report a theft a petty offense in the first case of a violation, and a Class A misdemeanor in the second. Although the bill was 11 votes short of the necessary 60 votes it needed to pass in the House, it has been re-submitted to the Rules Committee and may be considered sometime during this or another session. The conflicting motivations of these two bills underscore the fact that misguided philosophically and politically motivated legislators like Rep. Acevedo are the fundamental problem with the nature of firearms regulations in the city of Chicago, the State of Illinois, and The United States at-large.

Mistaken legislators and policymakers seek to curb illegal gun violence with "progressive" minded policies that restrict legal gun ownership and provide for unreasonably narrow usage rights. They levy punitive taxes on firearms and ammunition, costly gun owner and weapon registration fees, and establish required yet useless waiting periods for handgun purchases. The overwhelming majority of these policies are said to be crafted with the specific intent of reducing gun related violent crimes. But, in truth, they aim to reduce the public supply of legal weapons by discouraging gun ownership. These policies are always cloaked in “harm reduction” language that disguises the ultimate progressive goal of disarming and entirely subduing the public. But, all politics aside, the suppression of gun related violent crime is a noble calling; it’s a universal fact that reasonable people hate violence and death. But, how could such clearly counterintuitive gun control measures that aim to reduce the supply of illegally owned firearms by discouraging and limiting the supply of legally owned firearms be effective?

Chicago is a classic example of such a measure, and the extremes to which urban municipalities have gone in their quest for and use of overtly illogical gun control policies. The city has banned the outright ownership, possession, or sale of firearms within its city limits in an attempt to eliminate gun related violence. Even with a hyper-aggressive outright ban on legal firearm ownership and possession, the city still leads the nation in gun related crimes. Chicago’s firearm ban is a resounding failure: 509 people were murdered in the city in 2008 alone; in that same time period, 314 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq. Chicago's staggering murder rate is proof positive that reducing or eliminating the LEGAL supply of firearms fails to reduce the ILLEGAL supply of firearms used to commit violent or deadly crimes.

The vast majority of guns used in crimes are either stolen, bought after having been stolen, or supplied through interstate networks of arms traffickers and criminally complicit weapons dealers whom reside in states where firearm transfer reporting requirements are less than stringent, and rarely a matter of enforcement by state or local authorities (The State of Virginia is one example). Of those three categories, the latter is the most prevalent source of supply. By focusing the majority of its firearm oriented regulatory framework on legal firearm supply reduction and legal use restrictions, Illinois misallocates law enforcement resources to controlling mere transactions and citizen actions that are, by in large, regulated by common sense and self-interest: law abiding gun owners purchase guns for sport or for self-protection, not to serve as tools to be employed in criminal acts. Those that do use legal firearms for the purpose of crime are a fractional percentage of the whole. Further, these policies ignore the widespread availability of illegal weapons and their dealers whom don't require FOID card checks and waiting periods, or registration, should a criminal just happen to be in the market for a firearm. 

Illinois has implemented a broad market intervention scheme that unnecessarily polices a law abiding segment of society that wishes only to exercise a Constitutional right. In doing so, it limits the rights and diminishes the safety of law abiding citizens while improving the safety and market for illegal weapons for criminals. With a diminished supply of legally owned weapons based on this state's anti-gun rights regulations, the safety of violent and non-violent criminals is improved upon, and their knowledge of diminished gun ownership promotes increasingly brazen acts of crime and violence, without the threat of a home owner or potential rape victim threatening their life and safety in self-defense with a gun.

Across the nation, firearm focused regulation and law enforcement strategies are a paradox; the vast majority of policy makers and legislators have the knowledge that the problem of illegal gun crime is a large-scale supply driven issue. So, ideally, governments should update their regulatory regimes, begin allocating resources and shifting law enforcement priorities toward the task of interdicting established interstate weapons smuggling networks through a cooperative effort including state governments, the FBI, the ATF, and the Federal government at-large. A comprehensive strategy to attack the constant supply of ILLEGAL weapons would drastically reduce the availability of illegal or unregistered firearms, and for the first time in history real progress could be made in reducing the supply of illegal guns that ultimately are used in violent or deadly crimes.

But, instead, Illinois legislators like Rep. Acevedo pursue a path toward the same politically motivated and failed “Chicago” approach. House Bill 845 is cut from the same cloth as scores of politically motivated and highly ineffective legal gun supply reduction measures that protect criminals from the danger of a citizen firing back. These laws promote, not discourage, increased gun violence by allowing illegal guns to flood the streets of Chicago and other crime stricken Illinois cities, while disarming citizens and denying them a fundamental right of self-preservative firearm use.

House Bill 182 is a step in the right direction, but it’s only the beginning. Lawmakers like Rep. Bradley need to raise public awareness of the need for widespread reform in Illinois firearm regulation and the need for realism in this debate. By implementing the same failed policies time and time again, failure, in the form of hundreds of murders every year, is a foregone conclusion that we must no longer accept. There is a need for a new way forward. Future Illinois firearm regulation must shy away from politically motivated and highly ineffective legal firearm supply reduction measures. It must instead focus on building a regulatory framework that recognizes the interstate networks of illegal firearm supply as the true problem we face- and it must grant law enforcement agencies with every power necessary to disrupt and destroy these networks.

The Illinois legislature and Gov. Pat Quinn must decide whether they will do away with failed gun control policies by developing and implementing a new comprehensive regulatory framework that attacks the main source of illegal firearm supply, or adopt a business as usual approach that has made Illinois citizens less safe and with diminished rights, and the State of Illinois home to the murder capital of America.