More and more sheriffs are re-affirming their intention to not enforce Governor Pritzker’s precious Protect Illinois Communities Act gun and magazine ban law. The latest: Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell, pictured above at a Guns Save Life meeting in Springfield in 2023.
From My State Line:
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WTVO) — January 1 marked the deadline for Illinois residents who own any of 170 “assault-style weapons” banned under law to register the guns with state police as part of the Protect Illinois Communities Act.
However, just over 1% of Illinois’ Firearm Owner’s Identification card holders had registered banned weapons as of the deadline. One reason for the noncompliance could be coming from Illinois county sheriffs, many of whom say they won’t enforce the law.
Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell is one of 94 sheriffs in Illinois, including Ogle County Sheriff Brian VanVickle and Winnebago County Sheriff Garay Caruana, saying they will not.
“”We disagree constitutionally with this law,” Campbell said on Wednesday, according to The State Journal-Register. “Our plan moving forward is to use discretion and to educate the people as to what the law says.”
Kudos to Sheriff Campbell.
Kudos and then some. Ditto for Ogle and Winnebago county sheriffs as well.
A total of 94 sheriffs, if you believe this mainstream media report, signaled their intention not to enforce the law last year when it was signed. Recently, many of them have not talked much about it. Hopefully they’ll indicate reaffirm their earlier pledges to remind their constituents – and the governor – of their intentions.
Remember, when Pritzker signed the bill into law a year ago, only Cook, Lake and Champaign County sheriffs said they would enforce the measure.
Not sure about Cook and Lake counties, but I’m told by a retired police officer that Champaign County’s prideful sheriff discussed the matter with his senior staff. Many of them told him they would retire or resign before they went out to make arrests under the PICA law of otherwise law-abiding gun owners.
Maybe Champaign County’s Sheriff can “lead from the front” and do a few of those confiscation details by himself to test the waters.
every sheriff in il should do the same. fk fatboy & isp gun control goons.
Bravo. I would love to see city chiefs do the same.
My chief of police and sheriff have both publicly announced (months ago) that they will not enforce PICA nor assist any agency in the enforcement of PICA. ISP is on their own in my county. I actually find myself wondering how many of the rank and file ISP troopers and investigators support this.
ISP says they will leave it up to the county sheriffs to enforce. So who does that leave to enforce PICA? DNR says any firearm that was legal last year is legal this year. This is a law that few obey and even fewer enforce.
I had not heard nor seen this anywhere. Is there a source for this? ISP certainly isn’t saying that publicly on their website in their FAQs. If they aren’t planning to send out investigators or try to do audits, and the locals refuse to enforce, then it would seem to me that PICA is pretty much DOA.
Has anyone seen any recent reports on the enforcement of the Connecticut and NY State assault weapons bans?
.
Has any other state been active in enforcing their firearms bans?
.
Conversely, have there been any major court decisions recently declaring these laws unconstitutional?
A federal judge yesterday dismissed an attempt by the state of NY to quash the suit against their weapons ban, allowing it to continue. His language towards the state was not complimentary, to say the least. So, that effort is continuing to proceed, despite taking forever to wind its way through the courts. Since the NY SAFE Act pretty closely parallels PICA, any ruling there could be significant in our various lawsuits against PICA. Their registration is as oppressive as ours, and has been largely ignored by their gun owners as well.
The gun grabbers are playing the long game, consider the FOID act was started in 1968 and the big uproar at the time was that registration was going to be implemented in short order…..didn’t happen until 2023 some 55 years later so if they stay with the same long game strategy I don’t expect any kind of push to do wide scale confiscations any time soon given the ISP doesn’t have the manpower to pull it off……the thing that bothers me the most is the new law that Illinois can now hire illegal aliens as police officers, but Illinois is broke and unless they get a huge chunk of cash from Biden’s new office for ‘gun safety’ (currently run by Kamala “word salad” Harris) that hiring process will be slow going as well.
Buy this man a beer.