Springfield Morons at it Again

There's no way this passes Constitutional muster....and it seems to run against existing Federal Law:

• A first-of-its-kind state law would force gun manufacturers to pay for a portion of the financial toll of gun violence in Illinois.

  Gun violence costs the state about $20 billion annually, according to estimates based on data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That figure includes direct costs like emergency services, medical care, law enforcement resources and funeral expenses. It also includes indirect costs like mental health treatment, loss of income and childcare.

Illinois is paying funeral costs? Why?

• The Responsibility in Firearms Legislation Act, a bill coming before the Illinois General Assembly, would require gunmakers to contribute to a state fund that would help offset the costs shouldered by taxpayers and the individuals directly affected by a shooting.

  If passed, the law would be a first of its kind in the country. Other states have considered similar bills, but none have become law.

  “Name another industry in this country that gets to sell a product, profit from the damage it does and pay nothing for it,” said state Rep. Kevin Olickal during a news conference Tuesday morning outside the University of Chicago Medical Center.

Gee whiz.....how about clothes dryers? Gas ovens? Sharp knives? Extension cords and electrical appliances? Pools, wall mounted TVs, cleaning chemicals, etc. All of these things can damage or kill people....and do kill people on a daily basis.

The key here is to have knowledge of the danger, properly maintain the device and don't use it outside of the manufacturers' instructions.

• “When a car is defective, the automaker pays. When a drug harms patients, the manufacturer pays. Tobacco pays. Asbestos pays. Opioid companies are paying right now. That is how accountability works in every industry but one: firearms,” said Olickal, who is sponsoring the House version of the Responsibility in Firearms Legislation Act.

Wrong you moron. And you actually prove it in your screed - "defective." A gun is a legal device and when maintained and used properly, functions as designed, thereby rendering your entire argument pointless.

You aren't holding Ford, Chevy or any of the other dozens of vehicle manufacturers liable when a drunk misuses their product to kill innocents....because they tell you not to operate the car unsafely or when impaired. If you've ever bought a gun, the paperwork that comes along with one rivals many automobile user manuals.

But holding criminals responsible for the misuse of legal products has never been big on the lib-tarded radar. It would actually solve problems while cutting into their voting totals. If passed, this will cost Illinois more millions of dollars in taxpayer money for a losing proposition.

Stolen Gun

You ever notice that one of the statistics that never gets mention much is how many guns that are used in crimes are actually stolen guns? Many times when there's a shooting, the lib-tards complain about how easy it is to get a gun, that they're bought and transported over state lines, that we just need to ban guns outright to stop crime.

If you do a google search on "stolen guns used in crimes" you learn that:

• Stolen guns are significantly more likely to be used in crimes, with studies showing that stolen firearms have nearly nine times the likelihood of being involved in criminal activities compared to legally acquired guns.

So if you leave your gun in a parked car....let's just say in suburban Park Ridge....and someone breaks into said car and steals the firearm, why should anyone else be restricted from buying or owning a firearm because you were stupid with yours? Should it matter that you're the wife of a former high ranking CPD member from an east coast city? What if that stolen gun is used in a couple of armed robberies? Maybe an aggravated battery? God forbid a killing or three? That could really screw up Conehead's "crime is down" narrative.

We were just wondering. And we're wondering which media outlet might actually report this without telling anyone where they found out about it.

Paging Tommy Dart

For some reason, he's not answering though:

• Two national sheriffs organizations are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Cook County’s ban on AR-15s and similar semiautomatic rifles, arguing that the weapons can be important for self-defense when police cannot arrive quickly enough.

  The National Sheriffs’ Association and Western States Sheriffs’ Association filed a legal brief on August 31 supporting the challenge to Cook County’s assault weapons ordinance. The case, Viramontes v. Cook County, has been consolidated with a similar challenge to Connecticut’s statewide ban, and the Supreme Court agreed in June to hear both cases.

  The groups, which say they collectively represent thousands of sheriffs nationwide, start their argument with a basic reality of police work: cops cannot be everywhere at once.

  “Response times may vary from a few minutes to half an hour depending on manpower and geographical area,” the organizations wrote. “And a violent crime, especially a home invasion, can occur in seconds.”

Hell, those response times are typical in Chicago with manpower shortages, hiring deficits and backlogs. But Dart doesn't seem to be tossing his hat in with the National Sheriff's Association for some reason. 

On the brighter side though, a new survey says that there are currently sixty-million AR platform rifles currently owned by Americans which more than qualifies it as "in common use," meaning Porkulous's ban might be on it's last breath shortly. 

Supreme Court to Hear AR Ban

And if the past two years are any indication, Porky's AR ban is headed for the trash heap:

• The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a challenge to bans on AR-15s and similar semi-automatic rifles that could impact states that have implemented strict gun control measures.

  The justices granted a writ of certiori and consolidated two cases addressing bans on commonly owned firearms, including AR-15s. The petitioners specifically challenge restrictions in Illinois and Connecticut, two states with some of the strictest gun regulations in the nation.

  AR-15s are among the most common semi-automatic rifles in the nation. The model has drawn scrutiny, however, over its prevalent use by mass shooters.

  But the Supreme Court's recent Second Amendment cases have seen the justices err on the side of a permissive interpretation. This term, the court struck down restrictions on concealed carry permit holders in Hawaii. The justices previously struck down sweeping concealed carry restrictions in New York.

Actually, mass shooters use handguns far more often than rifles, but the media won't report that because those shootings are mainly in the blue state shitholes occupied by certain demographics. 

Rifles are used around 400 times a year in homicides. Handguns around 10,000 times. Suicides by firearms are almost always handguns and account for another 20,000 deaths. 

In any case, start saving up for that rifle you wanted. 

Dumb Dumb Dumb (UPDATE)

Another dumb idea, courtesy of Illinois dumbocrats, House Bill 4414: 

• Amends the Criminal Code of 2012. Provides that beginning January 1, 2027, all handgun ammunition that is manufactured, imported into the State for sale or personal use, kept for sale, offered or exposed for sale, sold, given, lent, or possessed shall be serialized. 
• Provides that beginning January 1, 2027, any person who manufactures, causes to be manufactured, imports into the State for sale or personal use, keeps for sale, offers or exposes for sale, or who gives or lends any handgun ammunition that is not serialized is guilty of a Class A misdemeanor. 
• Provides that beginning January 1, 2027, any person who possesses in any public place any handgun ammunition that is not serialized is guilty of a Class C misdemeanor. Provides exceptions. 
• Provides that beginning January 1, 2027, the Illinois State Police shall maintain a centralized registry of all reports of handgun ammunition transactions reported to the Illinois State Police in a manner prescribed by the Illinois State Police. 
• Provides that information in the registry, upon proper application for that information, shall be furnished to peace officers and authorized employees of the Illinois State Police or to the person listed in the registry as the owner of the particular handgun ammunition. 
• Provides that the Illinois State Police shall adopt rules relating to the assessment and collection of end-user fees in an amount not to exceed 5 cents per round of handgun ammunition or per bullet, in which the accumulated fee amount may not exceed the cost to pay for the infrastructure, implementation, operational, enforcement, and future development costs of these provisions. Effective immediately.

We haven't bought ammunition in Illinois in years. There are nearby states where we can buy thousands of rounds far cheaper than anything locally. And if we wanted to, standard thirty-round magazines.

It's almost exactly how we get our fireworks - we're happy to make the trip to Free States.

But that's a pretty big assumption that ammunition manufacturers are (A) tooled up to do anything like what is proposed and (B) ISP is equipped to log and record anything like what is in this proposal. We still remember the "gun registry" that ended up with something like a 3% compliance rate and zero enforcement action taken by ISP. 

It's probably cheaper to not ship ammunition to Illinois - which is likely the aim of the bill.

UPDATE: Just thought of this - say we show up locally for our retirement qualification. We usually being our oldest ammo along to burn up, stuff we've bought in our travels for trips to the range with buddies - it has no serial numbers. Are the instructors required to call an Officer in, arrest us, process us on the misdemeanor charge....and then revoke our retirement credentials?

Hello West Virginia!

This place just got a bunch more interesting!

• West Virginia lawmakers have introduced legislation that would allow the state to sell machine guns to qualified residents, marking a significant expansion of firearm rights in the state.

  Senate Bill 1071, introduced February 23, would create an Office of Public Defense within the West Virginia State Police with the authority to acquire and sell machine guns to “Qualified Persons” eligible to own firearms under state and federal law.

  According to the bill, the legislation is grounded in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article III, Section 22 of the West Virginia Constitution, which guarantees the right of people to keep and bear arms for the defense of self, family, home and state.

  The bill notes that federal law permits state governments to transfer machine guns to law-abiding citizens under the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968.

  Under the proposed legislation, the Office of Public Defense would establish distribution stations at each State Police Troop Headquarters throughout the state. Machine guns available for sale would include AR-15/M16-platform, M249-type, and MP5-type weapons currently in use by law enforcement and the United States Armed Forces.

The chance to own an H&K MP-5 would weigh heavily in West Virginia's favor.

Voter ID

So democrats are claiming requiring a valid government ID is the new "Jim Crow voter suppression" and they're telling lie after lie about "If you don't have a passport, you can't vote" or "If you got married and changed your name, you can't vote" or "If you're poor, you can't afford the passport fee so you can't vote."

These are all lies, made to trick the uneducated and misinformed into panicking.

But let's take it to it's logical extreme then (from our e-mail):

• Since you've made it crystal clear that requiring an ID to exercise a CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT is "disenfranchisement" and "the new Jim Crow," I have a proposal.
  
  
  The Second Amendment is a constitutional right. Voting is a constitutional right. You claim requiring ID to vote suppresses people from exercising their right. Okay. Then requiring ID to purchase a firearm suppresses people from exercising THEIR right. Same logic. Same constitution. Same argument.
  
  
  So here's my challenge to every Republican in Congress: introduce a bill TOMORROW that eliminates ALL identification requirements for purchasing firearms. No background checks. No ID. No waiting periods. Nothing. If Democrats truly believe that ID requirements prevent citizens from exercising constitutional rights, they'll HAVE to support it. Right?

The savings alone in disbanding the ATF would be amazing.

You need ID to buy liquor, enter assorted government buildings, travel on an airplane, get treatment at a hospital, conduct business at a bank, and any of a million other daily tasks. Remember how they were pushing "COVID passports" to go outside, eat at restaurants, even visit dying relatives in nursing homes? 

But an ID to vote, arguably the most important duty as a LEGAL CITIZEN, is suddenly "Jim Crow 2.0"?

Another Dumb Idea

Illinois.

Springfield.

Democrats.

All kinds of stupid - this bill is so poorly written:

• HB-3320 would force gun manufacturers to pay fees to help cover the medical bills, rent, court costs, etc of violent criminals if they get shot by a lawful gun owner —while committing a crime!

  That’s how Pritzker wants to ‘undo the effects of gun violence’ — by making gun manufacturers pay violent criminals if they get shot while committing a crime!

If a completely legal product sold in a completely legal manner is used legally....and said product functions properly and as designed, then there shouldn't be extraneous fees, fines or penalties attached to said product. 

There's a petition to sign electronically to express your displeasure with said bill, but we all know Springfield routinely ignores these. 

And if they don't ignore it, they merely do a "gut-and-replace" on some other piece of legislative bullshit like Fata$$ did with that other gun bill that was passed out of committee as an insurance bill after meeting all of the "open meeting" requirements, then had 100% of the language stricken and replaced with anti-gun legislation which was then passed in the dead of night.

Links here and here. 

They Grow Up So Fast!

Eight-year-old shooter:

• A 7-year-old boy was shot inside a Humboldt Park residence Thursday evening after another child found a firearm inside the home, Chicago police said.

  The shooting occurred in the 3200 block of West Division Street at approximately 7:04 p.m. According to police and radio traffic, an 8-year-old boy located a gun inside a second-floor apartment. The child then discharged the weapon, striking the 7-year-old boy in the arm, according to CPD.

  Cops applied a tourniquet to the child’s arm before the Chicago Fire Department transported him to Stroger Hospital, where he was listed in serious condition with a gunshot wound to the left bicep.

  Police recovered a firearm from a bedroom shelf in the apartment. No one was taken into custody.

Okay, technically not a "shooter" but a curious kid.

Turns out, this might be a test case for a new Illinois Law:

• The shooting happened on the same day a new gun storage law went into effect in Illinois. The legislation aims to make it harder for something like this to happen.

This is one of those laws designed to punish after the fact, rather than prevent anything, because it can't actually protect anyone - there is no enforcement mechanism for warrantless searches of homes. But upon conviction, you can bet that this offender will never be allowed to own a gun ever again.

The fine is $10,000, but once politicians see who the offenders are, we'll see if it's ever actually enforced. 

Nice Shot Lady

We just like posting these when they occur:

• A man was fatally shot after attempting to break into an apartment Saturday morning in East Garfield Park.

  The man, 33, attempted to break into an apartment with multiple people inside around 7 a.m. in the 3400 block of West Monroe Street when a woman opened fire, according to Chicago police.

  The woman, 28, shot the man twice, police said. He was taken to Mount Sinai, where he was pronounced dead, police said. His name hasn’t been released.

  Police said the woman has a valid conceal and carry license and was being questioned.

Nothing like a "feel-good" story during the weekend.

Defund Them Already

The last budget numbers we saw, ATF was losing around 18-to-20 percent of it's funding. After crap like this, it should be 100%: 

• The millions of law-abiding Americans who have chosen to carry a concealed firearm are putting “everyone involved at risk,” the ATF announced this week in a tweet on X. 

  “Take a look into our world. This is a scenario @ATFWasington frequently faces when combatting violent crime and maintaining public safety. Many people attempt to conceal firearms on their person or belongings which puts everyone involved at risk. #MakeDCSafeAgain #ATF,” the ATF tweeted on X. 

Per capita, far more people die after coming into contact with the ATF than a Concealed Carrier. 

The ATF is one of the two federal agencies with definite fascist leanings, the other being the fbi. After Waco and Arkansas, they should have been shut down immediately, and the past four years under the drooling vegetable putting legit firearm licensees out of business was beyond the pale.

PICA Act Unconstitutional?

Movement from the DoJ setting the stage for Illinois citizens to enjoy their Second Amendment Rights in the near future.

First is a video from our old friend Todd Vandermyde over at Freedom's Steel:

 

And second is a step-by-step breakdown of the Amicus brief from Washington Gun Law's William Kirk:

This is quite a significant development as the DoJ seldom inserts itself into cases at the Circuit level, preferring to wait for the US Supreme Court to step in....unless the case is so egregious in nature that immediate action is required to safeguard an enumerated Right.

Should be quite the battle. 

Well....

This will be an interesting investigation:

• A 14-year-old boy shot and critically injured a man who pulled a knife on a woman during a domestic altercation in Hyde Park last night, Chicago police said.

  CPD said a man and a woman, both 33, were engaged in a domestic inside a home in the 4800 block of South Drexel when the man armed himself with a knife around 11:02 p.m.

  Upon seeing the knife, the boy “produced a handgun and fired” at the man, according to a police statement. The man suffered a gunshot wound that entered his shoulder and exited near his armpit, leaving him in critical condition.

Fourteen-year-olds can't own a gun.

You don't need an FOID card to have a gun in your house.

If the Laws about securing a weapon in the house had been followed, we'd be reading about at least one homicide, maybe more.

We'll just be the first to say it:

• Nice shot kid. Nice shot.

That is all.

Showing ATF the Door

Looks like we won't be getting a wholesale disbanding of the fbi

But we may be getting something nearly as good:

• A report from CNN indicates FBI director Kash Patel — who is also ATF acting director — plans to cut “as many as 1,000 ATF agents” and move them to the FBI.

  This will represent a cut of roughly one third of the ATF’s current agents.

The thousand "agents" will be tasked with assisting in securing the border. As this isn't something most of them signed up for, we expect a sizeable number of resignations to follow, whereupon they can start picking all the vegetables and produce that the illegal aliens used to harvest.

The atf exists solely to infringe on Second Amendment Rights, sio this is a good thing.

Additionally, something else is good on the horizon:

• The House Judiciary Committee, led by Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), is planning to hold a legislative markup on March 25, 2025 at 10 am EST. The committee will be considering several bills during this markup, two of which are of crucial importance to law-abiding gun owners. A committee markup is often a critical step in advancing legislation to the floor of the U.S. House for passage.

  The first piece of legislation up for consideration, and the NRA’s top priority, is H.R. 38, the “Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act” introduced by Representative Richard Hudson (R-NC). This bipartisan legislation would provide nationwide reciprocity for concealed carry license holders and for residents of Constitutional Carry states. This legislation currently has 177 cosponsors in the U.S. House.

When you drive a car, your license is considered good in all of the United States. The privilege of operating a car doesn't stop when you leave home. So carrying a firearm - an enumerated Right in the Constitution - shouldn't stop at a state border either.

If and when this is properly enshrined in Law, it'll get rid of quite a bit of the crap Fata$$ has been doing to undermine our ability to buy a firearm.

Small Victory

A bunch of comments and almost zero media coverage of a court case that purportedly declares the FOID unconstitutional. As far as we can tell, this finding - the second or third such finding by this particular court - isn't quite as straightforward as it seems. The Court said that you don't need an FOID card in order to possess a firearm within your home.

The Court did however, find the attached fee completely unconstitutional:

• A White County Illinois judge has found the state’s Firearms Owner’s ID card unconstitutional when enforced against someone possessing their firearms in their home.

  The case Illinois vs. Vivian Brown stems from a 2017 case where Brown separated from her husband. She possessed a single-shot .22 rifle in her home. Her husband filed a complaint against her alleging she fired the rifle inside the home. Police found the rifle had not been fired, but the state’s attorney charged her with possessing a firearm without a FOID card.

  “After analyzing all the evidence in this matter, this Court finds that the Defendant’s activity of possessing a firearm within the confines of her home is an act protected by the Second Amendment,” wrote White County Resident Circuit Judge T. Scott Webb. “Additionally, there are no historical analogues to the FOID Act as required in Bruen.”

  The judge further said in his ruling Monday, “the Court finds that any fee associated with exercising the core fundamental Constitutional right of armed self-defense within the confines of one’s home violates the Second Amendment.”

As the court cases slowly erode the foundation of the FOID Act, the entire thing should eventually be found unconstitutional and Illinois could rejoin America as founded.

Interesting Proposal

An odd idea:

• Cook County’s new state’s attorney is proposing a new law that would help people charged with illegally possessing firearms get a license so they can own the weapons legally. Eileen Burke’s office revealed the idea on Friday.

  First-time gun offenders charged with a low-level firearms violation could “get into compliance with the law” if they complete a diversion program under the proposal, according to the announcement. Anyone accused of possessing machine guns, an increasingly common situation in Chicago, would not be eligible.

So instead of forever forfeiting the Right to legally own a gun upon conviction, the CCSA would have an education class and walk people through the process to obtain an FOID card? Will they be returning the seized firearm that resulted in charges or are they making people (and folks) buy another one through lawful channels to collect tax revenue and another off-the-books registry? 

And does this have anything to do with the second or third recent loss regarding the FOID card

Machine Guns Coming Back

Liberal heads will be exploding....figuratively of course:

• A U.S. District Court in Mississippi dismissed a machine gun possession charge, citing it didn't jibe with American history and tradition regarding the right to keep and bear arms. 

  The ruling came this week in the case of the U.S. vs Justin Bryce Brown, with Brown challenging his machine gun possession charge. As he had never been previously convicted of a felony, he argued that the Second Amendment protected him from criminal prosecution under the federal government's statutes. U.S. District Judge Carlton W. Reeves, a 2010 appointment to the federal bench by President Obama, agreed. 

  Citing the 2022 Bruen standard of a gun law being "consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation," Reeves dismissed the charge against Brown. 

  A similar unregistered machine gun possession case, that of Tamori Morgan – which was similarly tossed by a federal court in Kansas last August – though an outlier that is under further appeal by the Justice Department, was also referenced by Reeves in his decision on Brown, saying, "But outliers can nevertheless be instructive and correct, so long as they are faithful applications of the law."

That's two cases in short order restoring Rights long suppressed by democrats, commies and fascists, this time by a Sparklefart-appointed judge who actually seems to understand what the Supreme Court ruled in Bruen. Who would have expected that?

Someone Evaded Gun Laws?

When we last bought a gun, we remember filling out the Form 4473, that piece of paper that Hunter Biden lied on. And there was this question:

• Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance? Warning: The use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside.

So what's up with this?

• A concealed carry holder shot an armed man during a dispute Monday night in South Shore on the South Side, according to Chicago police.

  A 30-year-old man was standing outside in the 7200 block of South South Shore Drive around 9 p.m. when he began arguing with someone inside a vehicle, police said.

  The two began fighting and the concealed carry holder noticed the other man had a gun, police said. The 30-year-old then opened fire, striking the man once in the chest.

Oh wait, that's the Slum Times article. 

Here's the better story from CWB blog:

• A concealed carry holder shot a man during an altercation on the South Side last night and told police it all started when his weed dealer pulled a gun on him. The alleged dealer remains hospitalized in police custody.

  [...] According to information from the scene, the concealed carry holder told police he was trying to buy some pot from the guy in the car when the dealer pulled a gun on him.

The Slum Times, which never misses an opportunity to bash gun owners, completely hides the fact that someone must have lied on a Federal Form (felony!) to buy a firearm.

County to Screw Blue States

Who needs to follow Court orders? Not Cook County it seems:

• Cook County, Illinois, home of the nation’s largest open-air shooting gallery, otherwise known as Chicago, has a long and storied history of crime, corruption, and Second Amendment infringement. And today, between the gang members and the politicians who support them in an unholy alliance, that disregard for the rule of law and enumerated civil rights continues.

  The latest involves Cook County’s ordinance establishing targeted taxes on the exercise of the right to keep and bear arms – specifically guns and ammo. Guns Save Life, an aggressive gun rights organization in Illinois known for its “in your face” activism, filed a lawsuit challenging the gun and ammo tax shortly after it was enacted in 2015. That case went all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court which ruled in 2021 that the tax ordinance was unconstitutional. The Illinois Supremes ordered the trial court to enter a summary judgement in favor of Guns Save Life.

  Cook County then amended their ordinance and has been slow-walking the legal process with endless filings ever since. At long last, about a week ago, a Cook County trial court judge struck down the ordinance, again at the direction of the Illinois Supreme Court. It was a simple two-page order.

  Even after losing in the state’s highest court, Cook County has made it clear to the plaintiffs of the case, Guns Save Life, that they have no intention of ending its illegal collection of taxes on every gun sold in the county along with the ammo to feed them.
  

The lawyers over at Guns Save Life aren't morons though, and they've devised a brilliant strategy that will end up with Cook County taxpayers financing their lawsuits against dozens of other jurisdictions:

• Ultimately, if Cook County wants to continue to act like petulant children as a result of their loss, this case could end up in front of the US Supreme Court. If that happens and SCOTUS rules our way on the Second Amendment count within the suit, that could mean an end of gun and ammo surtaxes nationwide.

And court costs will then be assessed against the losing side, similar to how Shortshanks ended up cutting a check to the NRA for hundreds of thousands of dollars many years ago.

More Springfield BS

Washington Gun Law covers another crooked Illinois effort to further restrict gun rights and it follows the same pattern as a few other f@#$ed up legislative actions:

This is another one of those instances (like the "Protect Illinois Communities Act) where a bill about something else (for PICA, it was insurance regulations....for this it's fire hydrants) goes through committee, and in the dead of night, all language is stripped from the bill leaving a shell in name only, which is then filled with anti-gun legislation and passed out of committee without public input or debate. 

Lawmakers then pass the "insurance" or "hydrant" bill overnight or over the weekend in the lame-duck session and ::poof!:: your Constitutional Rights disappear. The gerrymandered dem super-majority then doesn't have to answer to anyone, ever.

Washington Gun Law explains it far better than we do, so go watch the nine-minute video.