Illinois residents who owned guns covered by the state’s sweeping firearms ban before it took effect last January have a little more than one month to register those weapons with the Illinois State Police before facing the possibility of criminal penalties.
Registration began Oct. 1, and through Nov. 21, 3,439 owners had registered nearly 6,600 guns they owned before those firearms became illegal to possess or sell in Illinois, according to state records.
While the degree of compliance is impossible to determine, the number of people who had registered through Nov. 21 represented just 0.001% of the 2.4 million people holding Illinois firearm owner’s identification cards, the state-mandated permits that authorize residents to own guns. FOID card owners might not own guns not covered by the ban, or have any guns at all.
The registration requirement for prohibited weapons that were owned before the ban’s Jan. 10, 2023, effective date was one of the most controversial aspects of the law, which gun rights advocates so far have failed to overturn through state and federal lawsuits.
On Oct. 31, when about 2,000 people had registered their grandfathered-in assault weapons about a month into the policy being in effect, Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly said the registration process had been “slow but steady.”
“We’ll just see how the process continues to work and we’ll share the data as we continue on a daily basis to do so,” Kelly said during an unrelated event in Springfield.
Two days later in Lake Forest, Gov. J.B. Pritzker downplayed any suggestion that not enough people owning the prohibited guns were registering them, saying it was too early to make such an assessment and suggesting registration would pick up closer to Jan. 1.
“I can tell you, at least for me, that I think all of us take our time sometimes when we know the deadline is two-and-a-half months (away), that we’ll find the time eventually to go online, which is what they need to do and to register as they’re required to do,” Pritzker said.
The sweeping ban on certain high-powered guns was spurred by the mass shooting on the Fourth of July in 2022 in Highland Park, which left seven people dead and dozens more injured. It prohibits the delivery, sale, import and purchase of more than 100 so-called assault weapons, in the form of semi-automatic rifles, shotguns and handguns. Also banned are the delivery, sale and purchase of high-capacity magazines of more than 10 rounds for long guns and 15 rounds for handguns.
People who owned those guns before Jan. 10 but don’t register them with the Illinois State Police by Jan. 1, can be charged with a misdemeanor for a first offense and felonies for subsequent violations.
But earlier this year, some law enforcement officials declared they had no intention of going after those who violate the law. After Pritzker signed the gun ban into law, an estimated 90 of Illinois’ 102 county sheriffs issued letters stating they “believe that (the new gun law) is a clear violation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution” and that they wouldn’t enforce it.
At public hearings in Springfield and Chicago earlier this month, state police heard concerns about the ban and its registration requirement from several gun rights advocates. One Republican lawmaker predicted that “hundreds of thousands” people would “absolutely not comply” with registering their weapons.
“We know this public hearing is taking place because (of) the governor and his radical-left agenda,” state Rep. Brad Halbrook, a Shelbyville Republican who is a member of the House Freedom Caucus, a group composed of his chamber’s most conservative legislators, testified before the state police. “He and his Democrat legislators passed this bill and then laid it at your feet to have to deal with it.”
Pritzker made his comments on the registration process at an event with Deerfield state Rep. Bob Morgan and Lake Forest state Sen. Julie Morrison, Democrats who supported the assault weapons ban in the General Assembly.
Morgan, who had just started to march in the Highland Park parade with his family when the mass shooting began, said people are still adjusting to the first-ever requirement that guns be registered.
Morgan said he thinks “there are a lot of individuals who have these weapons that are considering whether to sell them to someone out of state, which is a provision in the law that they’re allowed to do. So, I do think this is a function of cramming for the test that people will wait to the last minute.”
Pritzker and Morgan spoke on Nov. 2, when 2,430 FOID card holders had registered 4,592 banned weapons. By Nov. 21, about 1,000 more FOID card holders had registered roughly an additional 2,000 firearms, state records showed.
It’s unclear how many Illinoisans own semi-automatic guns that are now banned. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms industry trade group mounting one of the legal challenges to Illinois’ gun ban, there have been more than 24 million modern sporting rifles in circulation in the U.S. since the early 1990s, including many AR-15- and AK-47-type guns that are subject to the ban in Illinois.
On Nov. 3, the day after Pritzker’s appearance in Lake Forest with Morgan and Morrison, a three-judge panel from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Illinois’ gun ban in a 2-1 ruling, rejecting an argument that it violates the Second Amendment but leaving the door open for opponents to make a more compelling case as the legal battle continues.
Some of the gun rights advocates who were subject to lawsuits reviewed by the appellate court panel have since filed appeals to the full 7th Circuit, and a federal judge in southern Illinois is scheduled to hear arguments next month over the legality of the gun ban’s registration requirement.
Registration must be completed online through a FOID card account from the state police’s Firearms Services Bureau website, www.ispfsb.com. Gun owners will need an email address, driver’s license or state ID, and FOID card to create an account. A video on how to register by submitting what is called an endorsement affidavit through a FOID card account was also made available on the state police website.
___
© 2023 Chicago Tribune
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
