A bipartisan panel of Illinois lawmakers approved guidelines Tuesday covering how state police will maintain and enforce a registry of gun owners who possess high-powered firearms that are now banned.
The requirement for residents who possessed guns covered by the ban before it took effect on Jan. 10, 2023, to register those firearms by Jan. 1 has been one of the law’s most controversial aspects.
During Tuesday’s hearing of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, or JCAR, state police officials addressed issues raised by Republican legislators who oppose the ban that ranged from privacy for gun owners to what information would be available to police when they stop someone whose firearm information is in the registry.
State Rep. Ryan Spain, a Peoria Republican who co-chairs the panel, unsuccessfully called for a motion to block permanent rules from being put into place. Spain criticized the state police for filing their proposed enforcement rules too close to the Jan. 1 deadline.
“I’m really quite frustrated that we could’ve approached this differently with a clear time frame and trying to resolve many of these issues much earlier on so that firearm owners throughout the state of Illinois trying to understand this very complicated and conflicting legislation, in many ways, could’ve had better guidance on what they need to do,” Spain said.
Failure to register banned guns could result in a misdemeanor charge, or a felony for repeated violations.
“This legislation made criminals out of law-abiding citizens from the get-go,” state Sen. Don DeWitte, of St. Charles, said after the hearing. “Many people on our side of the aisle believe that it was unconstitutional going in.”
Over a series of hearings in recent months, gun rights advocates expressed confusion over the registration process, particularly on what they view as varying definitions of certain firearm accessories that need to be registered.
The gun ban has been upheld at the federal level, but legal challenges continue and state police officials told legislators that if it is deemed unconstitutional the gun registration data would be destroyed.
While Republicans on JCAR failed to stop the rules from being put into place, their motion to object to the rules passed in a 6-5 vote along partisan lines, meaning the state police will have 90 days to address the objection.
State Sen. Bill Cunningham, the Chicago Democrat who co-chairs JCAR with Spain, said he was satisfied by the number of changes made by the state police to their proposed rules before Tuesday’s vote.
“It’s a very complicated law, there’s no question about that. So it’s understandable that there would be confusion,” he said after the vote. “But I think there’s been a good faith effort made to try to address (the) confusion.”
The gun ban prohibits the delivery, sale, import and purchase of a long list of so-called assault weapons in the form of certain semi-automatic rifles, handguns and shotguns. Also banned are the delivery, sale or purchase of large-capacity ammunition magazines of more than 10 rounds for long guns and 15 rounds for handguns.
On New Year’s Eve, Darren Bailey, a far-right Republican congressional candidate from downstate who was defeated in the 2022 governor’s race by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who signed the gun ban, posted a picture on social media showing him at a table with a puzzle and some guns, presumably firearms covered by the ban.
“I’ll be here putting together this puzzle waiting for Pritzker to knock on my door and take my guns. I will not comply,” Bailey wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
While figuring out the degree of compliance at this point isn’t possible, it appears clear Bailey is far from the only gun owner who has declined to register. Through Dec. 31, 29,357 people had registered nearly 69,000 prohibited guns and over 42,000 accessories.
About 2.4 million Illinoisans have firearm owner’s identification cards, meaning about 1.22% of FOID card holders registered guns or accessories subject to the ban.
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.
Anyone wanting information about the state police’s registration process for grandfathered-in assault weapons can visit its website and read its section on frequently asked questions about the gun ban.
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