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Illinois lawmakers debate assault weapon ban

July 30, 2022 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

It’s unsurprising that Illinois lawmakers would look at what happened at Highland Park and think about an assault weapon ban. Truth be told, the most surprising thing is that Illinois didn’t already have one.

Now, though, they’re talking long and hard on the subject, increasing the likelihood that the anti-gun state will jump at the opportunity to pass such a law.

And yes, they’re using Highland Park to justify it.

Representatives held a Public Safety and Violence Prevention hearing on gun control searching for more routes to prevent another tragic mass shooting.
This was the first hearing after the Highland Park mass shooting in northern Illinois earlier this month that killed seven people and wounded dozens.
In the week after the Highland Park shooting, Democratic legislators have reawakened a bill banning semi-automatic rifles
In addition, the Cook County Board of Commissioners approved a resolution Thursday urging both the Illinois legislature and Congress to ban selling semi-automatic rifles.
“Everyday gun violence is ripping apart families here in Cook County and across the state of Illinois, and the General Assembly must take immediate action,” Kathleen Sances, president of the gun control advocacy group G-PAC, said. “The human toll of gun violence will only continue to climb if we don’t see immediate action taken to address this public health crisis.”

However, despite all the rhetoric that we see and expect to continue seeing, some in Illinois really do grasp the issue.

The same article continues:

But one gun store owner said semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 share many similarities with handguns.
“They are no different than any firearm that’s been available for the last 100-140 years now,” Scott Pulaski, owner of Piasa Armory in Alton said. “It’s one shot per pull of the trigger. They don’t fire any special or different or more deadly ammunition.”

They really don’t.

Now, an AR-15 fires a rifle round as opposed to a pistol round, but contrary to what some lawmakers claim, it’s not a particularly powerful rifle round. Other semi-automatic rifles are more powerful, of course, but they’re also common hunting weapons.

Not all semi-automatic weapons are AR-15s.

So why focus on such rifles?

The answer is that they’re scary looking. They look like what the military uses, and that means they’re terrifying to people who don’t know anything about firearms. It’s why the whole “weapon of war” label has been able to stick despite not a single military on the planet fielding them.

But the thing is, I don’t think these Illinois anti-gunners are really thinking this through.

You see, while they’re debating an assault weapon ban, they’re forgetting about the Bruen decision. It makes it pretty clear that you can’t ban a category of weapon, particularly one in common use, and with 24 million AR-15s in private hands, I’d say they’re in common use. Couple in the millions more that aren’t modern sporting rifles and there’s no way this survives.

Instead of debating an assault weapon ban, they could be talking about ways to actually impact mass shootings. They could be talking about helping fund research into why mass shootings happen, as to what drives some of these people to take human lives in job lots.

But no, they’re so laser-focused on curtailing people’s rights that they can’t think beyond “assault weapon ban.”

Of course, Highland Park had one. Clearly, it didn’t work.

Illinois lawmakers want more gun control

July 21, 2022 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

The idea of lawmakers in Illinois wanting more gun control isn’t earth-shattering, to say the least. Especially after the deadly shooting on Independence Day in Highland Park.

The problems arise when they want to push those ideas onto the rest of us.

Unsurprisingly, it seems they’re trying to do just that.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) set the stage Wednesday during a Senate judicial committee hearing on the deadly Highland Park shooting.
“The attack in Highland Park was the 309th mass shooting in America this year. There have been 47 more mass shootings since the Fourth of July,” Durbin said.

No, there haven’t.

Stop using the Gun Violence Archive’s numbers, Senator. They intentionally broaden the definition in such a way to make the numbers far scarier than they actually are.

Moving on…

Durbin and others would ban the sale and manufacture of powerful, military-style firearms that have become the weapons of choice for mass killers who now strike more than once a day.
The committee’s ranking Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley promised to block that, instead offering a plan to instruct Americans on how to spot potential mass shooters.

Which, of course, would ultimately be more productive.

Grassley also pointed out that the assault weapon ban accomplished nothing with regard to mass shootings, which triggered another Illinois senator.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) challenged that assertion.
“After the assault weapons ban expired in 2004 and the ranking member quoted statistics from 2004 that says there had been no significant change as of 2004. However, since the assault weapons ban was allowed to expire, mass shootings in this country have tripled,” Duckworth said.

Post hoc ergo proptor hoc.

After, therefore because of.

That’s a logical fallacy that argues that simply because something happened after something else, then it must have happened because of that thing. I mean, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 2004 as well. Is that also responsible for the rise in mass shootings?

The argument may look strong, but we also know that contrary to what the media claims, most mass shootings aren’t carried out with AR-15s. Instead, mass shooters prefer handguns.

Frankly, Duckworth and Durbin both fail to note that Highland Park had an assault weapon ban that did jack squat. Illinois requires licensing for gun purchases. That did jack squat as well.

Highland Park illustrates just how little gun control actually helps.

If there’s an upside to this, it’s the fact that there’s absolutely zero chance this gets a vote. The Senate already got all the gun control it was going to get with the bipartisan deal they reached in the wake of Uvalde. One of the architects of that deal has already said there won’t be anymore.

So really, this is just Senate Democrats puffing their chest up and pretending they’re going to solve the problem.

The issue is that they don’t even understand the problem. No one does. No one has really delved into why mass shootings happen or why they seem to be happening so much more now.

Instead, people like Durbin and Duckworth just blame the guns, all while pretending their state’s gun control laws aren’t a complete and total failure.

Illinois Democrats gearing up for a gun ban?

July 13, 2022 by Cam Edwards Leave a Comment

Even as we’re seeing lawsuits filed left and right over the constitutionality of bans on modern sporting rifles, Illinois Democrats appear ready to pass a ban of their own in the wake of the mass shooting in Highland Park on the 4th of July.

State Rep. Maura Hirschauer’s proposed ban was first introduced back in January with little fanfare and few co-sponsors, but since the Highland Park shooting dozens of House Democrats have been adding their name to the legislation, with at least 51 of the chamber’s 73 Democrats now on board. That’s still not a majority, but with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker also calling for a ban on the most commonly-sold rifle in the country, it’s likely that the state legislature will be called back for a special session on gun control and abortion ahead of November’s elections.

What they’re saying: “I am enraged by the gun free-for-all that’s killing our children, our seniors and everyone in between,” Democratic State Sen. Julie Morrison said in a release. “The only way we can end this crisis is for our state and federal government to pass the laws that we’ve all been demanding. Until that happens, we are not safe anywhere.”
“There are weapons of war on our streets that people can legally obtain and then take out dozens of people,” Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering said on the “Today” show Tuesday.
The Gun Violence Prevention PAC is calling on the legislature to “act quickly to regulate weapons of war.”
State of play: One study shows that Illinois gun laws are the eighth strictest in the country.
What’s more: Illinois’ current concealed-carry law prohibits municipalities from enacting their own assault weapons ban. That could change.

That last bit from Axios is interesting, as it suggests that Illinois Democrats might try to move to undo the state’s firearm preemption law and allow for political subdivisions to pass their own bans instead of using a special session to impose similar ban statewide. That’s what Colorado Democrats did last year, and we’ve recently seen a number of Denver suburbs move to put an “assault weapons” ban in place. We’ve also seen at least one lawsuit already filed challenging the ban in the Boulder County town of Superior, Colorado.

The lawsuit focuses on that Superior ordinance –– which the gun-rights group says is unconstitutional and violates the Second Amendment –– for its banning of high-capacity magazines and semi-automatic rifles, often referred to as “assault-style” rifles, such as AR-15s.
During the passage of the ordinance, trustee Mark Lacis said the restrictions were reasonable and consistent with the Second Amendment but worried they weren’t enough.
“Every single day these tragedies continue to occur and they are no longer anomalies,” Lacis said. “They are a part of our day-to-day lives.”
But Rocky Mountain Gun Owners disagreed.
“Superior’s anti-gun ordinance flies directly in the face of our right to keep and bear arms, and we’re not going to stand idly by and let this town – or any other rogue government – trample on our right to self-defense,” said Taylor Rhodes, executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, in a statement.
… “The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that owning and carrying firearms is an individual, incorporated, and enumerated right,” Rhodes said in the statement.
“Frankly, last month’s Bruen decision gave gun rights organizations a 4-ton wrecking ball to dismantle gun laws that we have known to be unconstitutional since their conception. If you think this stops in the small town of Superior, you are mistaken,” the statement read.

Oh, it definitely won’t stop in Superior. We already have one ban on so-called assault weapon ban challenge that the Supreme Court recently remanded back to the Fourth Circuit for a re-hearing based on the Bruen decision in addition to new lawsuits being filed in blue states like New York, where the Firearms Policy Coalition is seeking to overturn that state’s prohibition on commonly-owned semi-automatic rifles.

Where this ultimately stops, of course, is at the Supreme Court, and based on what the Court had to say in Bruen I think it’s highly unlikely that it will uphold bans on modern sporting rifles. In fact, I think it’s an easy call to decide that possession of these arms is protected by the Second Amendment. They are in common use, with more than 20-million in the hands of law-abiding Americans, and are used for a variety of lawful purposes including self-defense, hunting, and competitive and recreational shooting. There’s also no historical analogue to banning an entire class of firearms like semi-automatic rifles; gun control advocates simply can’t point to any 19th Century ban on the sale or possession of the first mass-produced lever action rifles with a 14-round magazine, for instance.

Heck, for decades the U.S. government worked with the Civilian Marksmanship Program to sell surplus M1 Garands used in war to civilians, which makes the whole “battlefield weapons of war don’t belong in civilian hands” argument that we hear from the left more than a little ridiculous. Not only are semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 not used in combat, the actual semi-automatic rifles that were used by the U.S. military in World War II and the Korean War aren’t even considered “assault weapons” under most state-level AWBs.

I have no doubt that Illinois Democrats have the votes to pass their semi-auto ban if they want, but being able to enforce it is another story completely. I believe the text, history, and tradition of our Second Amendment rights takes a ban like this off the table, and we hopefully won’t have to wait long before the Supreme Court has the opportunity to officially concur by declaring these sweeping prohibitions out of line and unconstitutional.

Highland Park survivors rally at US Capitol for gun control

July 13, 2022 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

Highland Park was particularly awful as mass shootings go. It was an Independence Day celebration, a parade commemorating the founding of this great nation. I’m just glad it wasn’t worse as far as the dead and injured numbers go.

Yet it seems those who survived the attack think we need gun control.

Organizers are expecting up to 1,000 people to converge on the U.S. Capitol Wednesday in support of stricter gun laws in the wake of the July Fourth mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois.
The “March Fourth” rally is part of a broader call for action in the wake of recent mass killings, including most recently the attack in Highland Park, where a gunman climbed to a rooftop in the wealthy Chicago suburb and opened fire on those watching a Fourth of July parade. Seven people were killed and dozens of others were wounded. Organizers say harsher policies need to be enacted to prevent the steady stream of mass killings. There have been 333 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
…
On Tuesday, organizers of the rally and survivors of the Highland Park shooting met with legislators about stricter gun control laws, Pryor said.The group spoke with Democratic lawmakers, including Illinois Sens. Duckworth and Dick Durbin, as well as Sen. Chris Murphy. Murphy’s term began as his state was reeling from the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, after 26people were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. They also met with Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.

Now, while I disagree with them, I get the desire to do something.

Unfortunately, those who survived Highland Park need to remember that they were supposedly protected by numerous gun control laws.

For example, Highland Park has an assault weapon ban on the books there. The state of Illinois has a red flag law as well, the very law we keep being told will stop these shootings from taking place. It didn’t in this case, though.

Then again, the assault weapon ban there didn’t accomplish a hell of a lot either, now did it?

Illinois has tons of gun control, all measures that are supposed to prevent such shootings from taking place, but it still did, so why should we believe more of what failed is the answer?

The desire to demand action is understandable. It’s human.

The desire to demand something that failed, however, isn’t. It’s doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result, the very definition of insanity.

Of course, these survivors are free to make whatever demands they want of Congress. That doesn’t mean anyone has to listen. More importantly, they shouldn’t listen. These are emotionally-driven demands that don’t necessarily reflect anything but those emotions.

Luckily, at this point, we know nothing else is coming out of this. They’re screaming into the wind, which is fine. Let them, if it makes them feel better.

But at no point should anyone take their demands seriously. As a nation, we deserve better than to have our laws dictated by those who don’t understand how precisely those laws failed them already.

Misdirections abound in pro-red flag law op-ed

July 12, 2022 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

Extreme Risk Protection Orders, or “red flag orders,” are popular among the gun control crowd. The idea of red flag laws, however, is popular with a lot of people outside of those circles as well.

After all, what’s not to like? The idea of taking a gun from someone before they hurt a bunch of folks? When we look at the history of mass shootings in recent years, it’s not difficult to see why many find the idea attractive.

Yet following those mass shootings, we tend to hear all about how it could have been avoided if we had red flag laws.

That happens in places like this op-ed.

When it comes to gun control measures, temporarily restricting access to firearms for people at a high risk for committing violence is one way to reduce harm. In many states, however, there are only limited legal options for doing so, even in situations where a person is making explicit threats of violence, either to themselves or others.
“The familiar refrain that we hear is, ‘What are we going to do? There’s no crime that’s been committed,’” said Shannon Frattaroli, a professor of health policy whose research focuses on gun violence prevention. She is a core faculty member of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.
This was the case in the recent mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where the shooter made explicit threats of violence beforehand. These threats were reported to police, who had no specific legal option to temporarily restrict the shooter’s access to firearms. It appears that in the Highland Park shooting on July 4, the suspect in the shooting was able to obtain firearms despite an alleged previous suicide attempt and threats of violence against his family.
One option for temporarily removing access to firearms is an extreme risk protection order, or ERPO for short, which is legal in 19 states and the District of Columbia.

Of course, the author goes on to try and make the case that such orders can prevent mass shootings, but there’s a bit of misdirection involved here.

First, the focus on Uvalde.

You see, Texas doesn’t have such a law on the books, so it makes a tempting target for criticism. Yet there’s no reason to believe that the mere existence of such a law would have prevented the deadly shooting there.

After all, New York has such a law on the books and it didn’t stop Buffalo.

Hell, they mention Highland Park but fail to mention that Illinois also has a red flag law on the books. Despite all the “red flags” mentioned, no one sought to use the order against the eventual alleged gunman.

By focusing on Uvalde, the author doesn’t have to delve into the complete and utter failure of the law to stop two other mass shootings.

None of which touches on the fact that red flag laws hinge on the idea of taking guns away from people who have done nothing illegal and without due process, or the fact that if these people are so damn dangerous, why are you leaving them on the streets?

Honestly, it’s really kind of sad that anyone thinks this is the answer to anything.