Call to action.
The General Assembly is in session and we’ll be posting calls to action for Guns Save Life members, supporters and friends from time to time.
This is one of those times. We need you to take a few moments to first, fill out some witness slips for committee hearings coming up on a couple of bills gun owners everywhere have good reason to be opposed to.
Furthermore, we’re asking everyone to contact your legislators in the House and Senate and ask them to support the legalization of suppressors.
Points to mention:
- These are “mufflers for guns”, nothing more.
- The don’t “silence” the report of a gunshot any more than a car or motorcycle’s muffler silences the exhaust of a vehicle.
- To buy a suppressor, one must undergo a federal background investigation and pay a $200 tax stamp for each suppressor. It’s not something that’s a threat to good people in Illinois.
- Suppressors aid in training hunting dogs, protecting hearing of shooters, and a reduction of noise issues for men and animals in the area where guns are fired.
- 39 states already have provisions for suppressors, and 35 have provisions to use them for hunting.
From Illinois Carry.
Call to Action
Witness Slips Needed
In our first Call to Action of the 99th General Assembly, we ask our members to voice their opposition to two bills scheduled to be heard in the House Judiciary – Criminal Committee 2/18/2015. To those who have already participated in filing witness slips, these bills will be familiar. We have opposed the intent behind both in prior General Assemblies and continue our opposition for many of the same reasons.Instructions for completing witness slips can be found here.
Please take a moment to make your feelings known on the following bills today.
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HB148 Lost & Stolen Firearms – OPPONENT
Illinois law has required FOID Card holders, but not persons illegally in possession of firearms, to report lost or stolen firearms since the Gun Safety and Responsibility Act became law effective 8/9/2013. HB148 seeks to deny otherwise law abiding citizens their right to own firearms via FOID revocation and felony conviction.
HB265 Firearm Protect Order – OPPONENT
There are many forms of protection order available to the courts in Illinois, from granting occupancy of the family home to giving custody of the family pet to one spouse or another. Of the tools available to a judge a firearm protection order, as it currently exists in law, is one of the most important when determined necessary by a court of competent jurisdiction.
HB265 proposes to subvert the judicial discretion so necessary to our system of governance by prohibiting the subject of an order of protection from purchasing or transporting a firearm, even when that order is simply in regard to animals, property, and a number of other orders unrelated to a physical threat against the petitioner.
While enough to oppose on its own merits, HB265 also creates a frightening potential synergy when taken in context with HB399 Protection Order Issuance. Though not the subject of the current call to action HB399 proposes to empower the States Attorney, and courts on their own motion, to impose an order of protection on behalf of a petitioner even against the petitioner’s wishes. This combination of ill conceived legislation, both bad in their own right, establishes an untenable system of potential rights denial under the most unusual of circumstances.
there’s no way in hell I’m paying $200 tax so I will not support this. I can buy a lot of hearing protection for $200. Tell me again what you’re doing for me the gun owner. Sounds like just making more money for the government.
The tax already exists – it has since 1934. If you lived in a state that allowed suppressors, you could choose to buy one – or not to buy one.
By supporting this bill, we’re not supporting a tax – we’re supporting the right of gunowners to choose how best to protect their hearing and be courteous to others.
Do some reading on the FEDERAL (no Illinois) NFA laws. Suppressors are already heavily regulated ($200 tax, etc) by the FEDERAL government, so there is no reason for them to be illegal in this state.
If you don’t wish to own a suppressor, you don’t have to. But surely you are in favor of those of us who wish to have the ability to own one, to be able to do so legally, yes?
The tax has existed for DECADES!!!! You need to educate yourself and/or as questions before shooting your mouth off in such a negative fashion, sir! It is a federal tax levied on all NFA items, it is standard and has nothing to do with IL or anything at the local or state level.
I my state however like IOWA one can not own a silencer …read up on the law.
Come on people lets get this done. This be are only chance is with this govner. So lets do it!!
I fully support this bill. I have shot many of weapons over the years and a suppressor is an added plush to protect our hearing as well as the hearing of our dogs in the field. They are NOT silencers and the left will surely try to tie this to the fabricated movie scenes where they criminal shoots someone and you dont hear the shot because of a “silencer”.