The Illinois General Assembly is in full swing, and there are already bad bills lining up. Two of the bad bills that have started to show signs of life are House Bill 4269, introduced by State Representative Monique Davis (D-27), and House Bill 4349, introduced by Representative Naomi Jakobsson (D-103). Both bills deal with the same subject matter--ammunition serialization/encoding--and are basically identical in what they do. These bills would require every round of ammunition sold in Illinois--both the bullet and the casing—be marked with serial numbers. These numbers would be unique for each box of ammunition. At the point of sale, each purchase would be recorded to identify the purchaser of the (registered) ammunition, and this information would be reported to the Illinois State Police for entry into a database.

These bills also call for the collection of a fee of $.05 for every round of ammunition sold, in order to pay for the operation of this new database. These standards would be put in place by January 1, 2009, and any ammunition possessed before that date and not encoded must be disposed of by January 1, 2011. In effect, these bills are a ban on ammunition in Illinois.

Many major ammunition manufacturers would likely abandon the Illinois market, due to the dramatic increase in cost necessary to operate there, and it would prohibit gun owners from reloading their own ammunition. One manufacturer, Winchester Ammunition in East Alton, might even be forced to move out of the state, taking critical jobs and tax revenue with it. Any manufacturers that continue to do business in Illinois in compliance with the law would be forced to pass on the added cost to retailers, who, in turn, would have to pass it on to law-abiding consumers. Add to the mix the additional tax of $.05 per round of ammunition, and the cost of ammunition will soon be far too expensive for most hunters, competitive shooters, and those otherwise interested in honing their skills with a firearm to continue with their practices. These bills must be defeated. They have no benefit to law enforcement, and would serve only to drive up the cost, and drive down the availability, of ammunition for law-abiding gun owners in Illinois. Both bills have been referred to the House Executive Committee, and could be brought up any time.