Illinois: Session Starts, Anti-Gun Bills Carried Over

Today, the Illinois General Assembly began its 2022 legislative session. Anti-gun bills from 2021 have carried over to this year’s session.

Senate Amendment 1 to Senate Bill 568, deceptively called the “Fix the FOID Act,” criminalizes private transfers of firearms from one FOID holder to another FOID holder, requires fingerprints for both new FOID applications and renewals, doubles the application fee of a FOID to $20 while halving the duration to five years, and increases the processing time for a FOID, among other things. These proposals make it more expensive and difficult for law-abiding citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights, while adding nothing of investigative value for law-enforcement. Current Illinois law already only allows FOID holders to conduct private transfers of firearms to other FOID holders, and state police already do background checks on FOID applicants.

Senate Bill 1855 requires firearms be made unavailable for self-defense by imposing one-size-fits-all storage requirements. Safe storage is a matter of personal responsibility and everyone’s situation is different.

Senate Bill 2510 arbitrarily classifies many modern semi-automatic rifles, semi-automatic handguns, and shotguns commonly owned by law-abiding citizens as “assault weapons,” and bans them, along with spare parts and accessories. Citizens who own banned firearms prior to the effective date of the law may continue to possess them only if they register them with state police and pay fees.

Your NRA will continue to fight against the repeated attacks on the Second Amendment in Springfield. Please stay tuned to www.nraila.org and your email inbox for further updates on these bills and others as they make their way through the legislative process.