Sorry I was AWOL last week. Lots of factors at play. Upside was keeping my eyes off the screen; downside was a lapse in my snappy, incisive commentary on the circus that is the United States of America these days.
I happen to live in Illinois and our esteemed governor, JB Pritzker, signed a broad ranging “assault weapons” ban in January this year that requires owners of any guns on the banned list to register them with the authorities by December 31, 2023. They can keep such guns (how benevolent! how gracious!) but if that person doesn’t register them with the Illinois State Police before the end of this year, they risk being fined or jailed or both.
This is, of course, an extreme infringement on our Second Amendment rights: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
INFRINGE, verb
1 : to encroach upon in a way that violates law or the rights of another
Whenever there is some kind of law or regulation enacted on the ownership of firearms, there you have an infringement. Making me fill out paperwork and register with the government is an infringement on my right to “keep and bear arms.” Making me pay a fee in order to own a gun is an infringement. A “right” in its purest form is not something that a government bestows or manages, but something that I already have, free and clear from government interference.
Yet that doesn’t stop the “””elected””” bureaucrats from trying to manage speech, religion, guns or any of a dozen other things that the US Constitution guarantees to its citizens.
Illinois citizens are fighting back.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – A firearms retailer and a national gun rights group have filed an emergency plea with the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to block Illinois’ assault weapons ban.
The plea argues that law-abiding citizens in Illinois are facing irreparable injury as their fundamental right to keep and bear arms is being infringed.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied an emergency request for an injunction made earlier this year. I’m not overly confident that this will fare any better.
Meanwhile, the Illinois State Police is urging gun owners in the state to register their assault-style weapons in compliance with the Protect Illinois Communities Act. The legislation prohibits the sale of 170 firearms, but owners of previously possessed weapons can maintain them if they are registered with the state before January 1, 2024.
This is where it gets interesting. The Illinois State Police are urging Illinoisians to register their guns, but Illinois sheriffs are not being so supportive.
At least 74 Illinois sheriff’s departments vow to defy state assault weapons ban
The sheriffs say they believe the law violates the Second Amendment.
By Peter Charalambous
January 13, 2023, 6:01 PM
Just days after Illinois became the ninth U.S. state to ban assault rifles, the state already hit a roadblock to implementing the law: defiant sheriff’s offices.
At least 74 Illinois sheriff’s departments have publicly vowed to defy elements of a recent gun-control law signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, which banned assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and switches. The offices have vowed to not check if weapons are registered with the state or house individuals arrested only for not complying with the law.
You might pass the legislation, but enforcing it is a whole other world.
I don’t support this legislation. It came on the heels of a heinous crime in a community not far from where I live, as described in the Response in Opposition to Renewed Application for Injunction Pending Review filed with the U.S. Supreme Court by the City of Naperville and the State of Illinois.
“On July 4, 2022, a shooter armed with a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle and 30-round magazines opened fire on an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois. This weapon made it possible for the shooter to fire 83 rounds in less than a minute, killing 7 and wounding 48. A Highland Park ordinance prohibited the sale of assault weapons, but the shooter had legally purchased the murder weapon elsewhere in llinois.”
Yes, a heinous crime committed by a kid who bought the gun legally. The reaction by our state legislators—the Democrats—is to ban anyone and everyone from having any gun they deem an “assault weapon” so that such crimes are no longer committed.
A noble goal, but impossible to achieve. All they’re doing is stripping law-abiding citizens of their rights. The problem isn’t the gun; the problem is the person who’s using the gun.
This is where we try to use laws to tame the human heart—an impossible task. The only thing that can change a heart is the love of Christ, and that can’t be legislated.
For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. (Romans 7:5-6)