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The gun control contingent in the Illinois General Assembly think they are unstoppable and unsinkable.  Rep. Bob “Bozo” Morgan introduced HB-5855 a couple of weeks ago and it would make the majority of Illinois gun owners felons instantly.  Days later, a similar gun and magazine bill, SB-2226 was passed by the House.

The governor and gun control legislators, including the House and Senate leadership, want this bill.   We will have to beat them in court, but to get proven results in court, we need to raise the money necessary for this fight.  We need your help today.

The Background…

The gun control cadre in Springfield had a pretty good head of steam built up in their jihad to pass radical gun control.  The House Committee holding hearings on HB-5855 didn’t go exactly as planned.  Black Caucus members got stung at a committee hearing.  What’s more, the gun control Dems trying to look “reasonable” on this have run smack into a brick wall when it comes to pro-gun members in the General Assembly as well as gun rights organizations who have told them “we’re not negotiating.”  In fact, we’re not discussing, debating, or giving them our analysis of their bill.

For those who have not heard the news before now, here’s a summary.  (Update:  Here’s the summary for 2226) In short, if you have two or more standard capacity magazines, you would instantly become a Class 4 felon.  Same as sex with a minor over age 13, or possession of kiddie pron.   And no, there’s no grandfathering of existing magazines.

All of your scary guns would have to be registered too – at your own expense.  You already know what follows registration, too.

Make Revolvers Great Again?
If 5855 passed, we would all be pretty much relegated to revolvers for sidearms.  While you might be able to buy the hottest selling defensive handguns on the market today, you wouldn’t be able to own the magazines to feed them.  And most semi-automatic rifles would be banned, along with quite a few shotguns, including the manufacturing of said guns.

We’ve posted some updates (Dec 19 | Dec 21 (notes from the hearings) | Dec 24  and commentary (“We Will Not Kneel To Anyone“).

The Illinois Senate, now that they’ve assessed how the trial balloon in HB-5855 fared, are now drafting a competing bill.  Is this the old “good cop/bad cop” routine?  You know, where they throw out HB-5855 to ring all the alarm bells and then come out with a bill that only bans half as much and then they’ll sell that as the “reasonable” alternative?  We don’t know.

We expect something pretty onerous to pass in the Lame Duck session from Jan 4-Jan 10th (ish) with an immediate effective date.  Our best guess is that JB Pritzker will sign it into law sooner rather than later, maybe in the January 20-30 time frame.

Our plan is to have potential individual plaintiffs identified (Guns Save Life already provided that – including a who’s who from the Illinois gun rights world and beyond).  Also, the coalition of groups and organizations Guns Save Life is working with has identified competent and experienced law firms for this endeavor.   Again, we’ve identified them and expect to retain them in the coming days.

If all goes as planned, backstopping our local counsel will the the Second Amendment Law Center out of California.  They are Chuck Michele’s organization and Michele is the attorney who has a number of big wins in California challenging their gun control schemes, including their magazine bans, their semi-auto bans and more.   Their experience and ability to write powerful briefs for the court will prove priceless when it comes to defending our rights in the Land of Lincoln.

Once we see the final legislation, including the Senate’s competing bill, we will have our legal team finish drafting the lawsuit and have it ready to file within hours of the governor signing the bill into law.

We anticipate having a Temporary Restraining Order within weeks at the most and then we’ll litigate it for permanent injunctive relief.

This will cost serious money though.  About $125,000 to get started.

We’ve already raised a big part of that before Christmas and donations continue to come in.  (I’m not authorized to release the exact figures, but it’s impressive.)

Here’s our coalition’s philosophy on fundraising and use of donated funds.

• The law firms we’re dealing with are offering discounted rates for non-profits (that would be us), especially given the likelihood of success on our end.   They’re hungry to be a part of landmark civil rights actions.
• We’re NOT HIRING any professional fundraisers.  That alone will make the donated monies go a LOT further (twice or more, in fact, as fundraisers chew up a lot of donations in just reasonable and ordinary expenses of raising money…  and then there are their fees.)  We’re doing this by purely grassroots efforts.
• We’re not co-mingling this money with Guns Save Life general operating funds, or the operating funds of any of our coalition team members.
• 100% of the collected monies will go to paying attorneys to fight these new legislative proposals.  Not a nickel of it will pay for brand new Chevy Suburbans for staff, vacation trips to the Bahamas or $20,000 suits.
• If we prevail, and we expect we will, we may recover our attorney’s fees from the state.  At that point, we’ll decide as a team, but it seems likely that we would plow those monies into filing new suits to attack other existing gun control measures in Illinois. (Such as prohibited locations…)

For those of you asking, “Challenge the FOID Act!”  Well, we’re already ahead of you.  Guns Save Life’s legal challenge to the Constitutionality of the FOID Act is now in front of the court for a decision.  We expect that sometime in January-ish.  We expect a favorable decision which will strike down the FOID Act.  Regardless of who wins initially, we expect the case to work its way to the Illinois Supreme Court.  The final determination will likely happen in early to mid-2024 at the latest.

So, back to the matter at hand.

Where to donate:

You can donate anywhere, to anyone as you see fit.  However, in this fight, there are two places you as an individual, organization or business owner can donate to this legal defense of our gun rights in court. 

Again, if we can’t hire the best attorneys, we risk another organization or group bringing in inept or buffoonish legal minds to run this case.  And buffoonish attorneys often fail to successfully argue and win their cases.  Or, if they win in spite of themselves, sometimes it gives us poor legal precedent.

Again, we’ve got the best in Illinois identified and they’ve agreed to help us in this, but we need your help to make that happen.  (And for the record, it’s NOT David Sigale.)

To donate for our local counsel, our coalition has agreed to steer everyone to the FFL-IL organization’s legal defense fund.  It’s not perfect, but time is of the essence ad the FFL-IL’s leadership, including its head Dan Eldridge of Maxon’s, assures us that all donations will be exclusively earmarked for our Illinois legal fight.  I TRUST DAN ELDRIDGE on this, and you should too.  This one is not tax deductible.  You can donate here:

FFL IL Donations Page

To help with the California-based legal team backstopping our Illinois counsel, you can make a TAX DEDUCTIBLE donation here:

Second Amendment Law Center Donation Page.

All donations from Illinois addresses will be earmarked for Illinois litigation expenses.  This one is a 501c3 organization and all donations are tax deductible as the law allows.  For those who feel more comfortable in donating to tax deductible “charities,” this is right up your alley.  You’re donating to a great cause and you can use it for your taxes if you itemize. 

Some are asking gun owners to all donate $5 or $10.  If that’s what you can afford, then by all means, it helps.  If you can afford more, I’d encourage folks to chip in $50 or $100 as individual.  If you’re blessed and can donate $5,000 or $10,000 to this worthy cause, by all means it will represent money very well spent.

Never one to ask others to do what I’m not willing to do myself, I’ve donated $200 to the FFL-IL Illinois fund and the same to the Second Amendment Law Center fund.  I’ve also donated at pass-the-hat events including at the DeWitt County Sportsman’s Club.

Organizations, if you can donate $5000 or $10,000 or more, that would be a massive help.  I expect Guns Save Life to make a sizeable donation in the coming weeks after our next board meeting.

And business owners:  give what you can.  Gun shops and gun manufacturers across Illinois should be donating big bucks.   If this bill passes and stands a legal challenge, it will effectively drive most of the gun stores out of business once everyone has bought a revolver or two.  It would also ban the manufacture of said firearms as well.

We need to generate $125,000 to start the defense our our rights.  Again, we’ve already got a sizeable chunk of that.  Donate today.  Help us save gun rights in Illinois.  100% of your donations are going to this fight.