Illinois Semi Automatic Firearm Owners: Be Aware of HB1294

January 27th, 2012

If you bother to read the full text of the legislation, you’ll find that the definition of “assault weapons” is very broad and covers a lot of rifles, handguns and shotguns.

Via: Illinois General Assembly:

Synopsis As Introduced
Amends the Criminal Code of 1961. Provides that 90 days after the effective date of this amendatory Act, it is unlawful for any person within this State to knowingly manufacture, deliver, sell, purchase, or possess or cause to be manufactured, delivered, sold, purchased, or possessed a semi-automatic assault weapon, an assault weapon attachment, any .50 caliber rifle, or .50 caliber cartridge. Provides that beginning 90 days after the effective date of this amendatory Act, it is unlawful for any person within this State to knowingly manufacture, deliver, sell, purchase, or possess or cause to be manufactured, delivered, sold, purchased, or possessed a large capacity ammunition feeding device. Provides that these provisions do not apply to a person who possessed a prohibited weapon, device, or attachment before the effective date of this amendatory Act if the person has provided proof of ownership to the Department of State Police within 90 days after the effective date of this amendatory Act. Provides that on or after the effective date of this amendatory Act, such person may transfer such device only to an heir, an individual residing in another state maintaining that device in another state, or a dealer licensed as a federal firearms dealer. Specifies penalties for violations. Provides exemptions. Provides that the provisions of the Act are severable. Effective immediately.

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October 27, 2011

Source: Zero Hedge

Americans may be fleeing from stocks in droves, but they sure aren’t shy about rotating the resulting meager liquidation proceeds into weaponry. According to Gallup, “Forty-seven percent of American adults currently report that they have a gun in their home or elsewhere on their property. This is up from 41% a year ago and is the highest Gallup has recorded since 1993, albeit marginally above the 44% and 45% highs seen during that period.” Considering the social situation “out there”, and the fact that the world is one badly phrased or translated headline away from a complete HFT-facilitated market collapse, this is hardly all that suprising.

More:

The new result comes from Gallup’s Oct. 6-9 Crime poll, which also finds public support for personal gun rights at a high-water mark. Given this, the latest increase in self-reported gun ownership could reflect a change in Americans’ comfort with publicly stating that they have a gun as much as it reflects a real uptick in gun ownership.

Not surprisingly, republicans pack more heat than democrats. Perhaps it is best not to piss too many off…

Republicans (including independents who lean Republican) are more likely than Democrats (including Democratic leaners) to say they have a gun in their household: 55% to 40%. While sizable, this partisan gap is narrower than that seen in recent years, as Democrats’ self-reported gun ownership spiked to 40% this year.

Women are more armed than ever. Perhaps it is best not to piss too many off…

The percentage of women who report household gun ownership is also at a new high, now registering 43%

Southerners, yes shocking, are the best armed of all. Perhaps it is best not to piss too many off…

Gun ownership is more common in the South (54%) and Midwest (51%) than in the East (36%) or West (43%) — a finding typical of Gallup’s trends in gun ownership by region.

Gallup’s conclusion: “A clear societal change took place regarding gun ownership in the early 1990s, when the percentage of Americans saying there was a gun in their home or on their property dropped from the low to mid-50s into the low to mid-40s and remained at that level for the next 15 years. Whether this reflected a true decline in gun ownership or a cultural shift in Americans’ willingness to say they had guns is unclear. However, the new data suggest that attitudes may again be changing. At 47%, reported gun ownership is the highest it has been in nearly two decades — a finding that may be related to Americans’ dampened support for gun-control laws. However, to ensure that this year’s increase reflects a meaningful rebound in reported gun ownership, it will be important to see whether the uptick continues in future polling.”

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October 12, 2011

Source: Associated Press

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A new ban signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown prohibiting the open carry of handguns in public could lead to an unintended proliferation of rifles and other long guns in public if gun enthusiasts continue to fight for their Second Amendment rights.

Brown signed AB144 by state Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-Pasadena Monday morning. The bill will make it a misdemeanor to carry an exposed and unloaded handgun in public or in vehicles. Violators could face up to a year in prison or a potential fine of $1,000 when the law takes effect Jan 1.

Gun owners have been protesting the legislation since it was introduced in January, a few days after a shooting in Tucson, Ariz., killed six people and wounded 13, including U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords. In April, gun owners began carrying unloaded handguns in public places and restaurants as a political statement in Pasadena.

Read More

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(David Codrea)   An interpretation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that pistol grip shotguns are not shotguns has created an unforeseen legal liability for owners of such firearms.  ATF’s Nov. 2009 FFL Newsletter declared:

Certain commercially produced firearms do not fall within the definition of shotgun under the GCA even though they utilize a shotgun shell for ammunition. For example, firearms that come equipped with a pistol grip in place of the buttstock are not shotguns as defined by the GCA.

Here’s another wrinkle, from Mike Vanderboegh at Sipsey Street Irregulars:

An October 27, 2010, letter from the Firearms Technology Branch ruled that such a firearm, with a 17″ barrel and 26-1/4″ overall length, was not subject to the National Firearms Act.

You can click here to read the letter.

That would seem to indicate there’s no issue with violating National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record (NFRTR) requirements, right?  No worries if you own one, or want to buy one…?

Not so fast.  If the pistol grip firearms are not “shotguns,” what are they?

The NFA Owners Association points us to the only “legal” definition seemingly available with which to classify these firearms (click on link for “National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934, as amended” to open up the text):

[T]aken at face value, a “pistol grip firearm” with a bore diameter larger than 1/2″ in diameter is a “Destructive Device” under the NFA, unless the Attorney General determines that it is “a shotgun . . . generally recognized as particularly suitable for sporting purposes.” By determining that a “pistol grip firearm” is not a shotgun, it is difficult to understand how current law would not classify such as firearm as a Destructive Device.”

A “Destructive Device”?

“Any weapon by whatever name known which will, or which may be readily converted to, expel a projectile by the action of an explosive or other propellant, the barrel or barrels of which have a bore of more than one-half inch in diameter, except a shotgun or shotgun shell which the Secretary finds is generally recognized as particularly suitable for sporting purposes.” Source: 26 U.S.C, Section 5845(f).

Which means registration on the NFRTR would be required.  But there’s no way to do that retroactively, is there?

Per Vanderboegh:

It appears there are only two solutions: (1) change the law to revert things as they were before ATF made the foregoing rulings, or (2) establish an amnesty period so millions of “Pistol Grip Firearms” can be lawfully registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record (NFRTR) system.

Otherwise, he notes:

This action has apparently created millions of unregistered Destructive Devices, currently possessed by millions of law-abiding gun owners who do not realize they now illegally possess unregistered NFA firearms.

That is, depending on what ATF chooses to do next.  Or what they have forced on them.

But certainly this is all hysteria and an unjustified over-reaction to some “poor wording”? Some would counsel us not to worry, broadly assuring:

There’s no way these’ll turn into NFA-controlled guns or suddenly become illegal.

Let’s hope such confidence is well placed, and the final word, and more authoritative than, say, the implications of  ATF Ruling 95-3 (bearing in mind that per ATF, the pistol grip firearms in question are NOT shotguns, so any determination that they are “particularly suitable for sporting purposes” would be irrelevant by their own definition.)

What a confusing mess.

Tomorrow, let’s talk machine guns.  Lots of machine guns.  Lots of unregistered machine guns.

And ATF knows all about them.

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Obama: “I’m working on gun control under the radar”

May 26, 2011

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Source: CNSNews.com

Violent crime continued to fall in 2009, even as gun sales reached an all-time high, according to statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). This is “proof positive that gun prohibitionists have been consistently and undeniably wrong,” the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said in a statement.

Released Tuesday, the violent crime statistics are part of the FBI’s yearly Uniform Crime Report, which collects crime statistics from localities all across the country and is the most comprehensive report on crime in America.

According to the FBI, the number of violent crimes of all types declined in 2009 by 5.3 percent and property crimes declined 4.6 percent. In fact, the rate of violent crime declined 6.1 percent below 2008 figures.

In total, the FBI estimated that 1.3 million violent crimes were committed in 2009.

Read Full Article Here…

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Source: CBS

UNIONDALE, N.Y. (CBS 2) — He was arrested for protecting his property and family.

But it’s how the Long Island man did it that police say crossed the line.

He got an AK-47 assault rifle, pulled the trigger and he ended up in jail, reports CBS 2’s Pablo Guzman.

George Grier said he had to use his rifle on Sunday night to stop what he thought was going to be an invasion of his Uniondale home by a gang he thought might have been the vicious “MS-13.” He said the whole deal happened as he was about to drive his cousin home.

“I went around and went into the house, ran upstairs and told my wife to call the police. I get the gun and I go outside and I come into the doorway and now, by this time, they are in the driveway, back here near the house. I tell them, you know, ‘Can you please leave?’ Grier said.

Grier said the five men dared him to use the gun; and that their shouts brought another larger group of gang members in front of his house.

“He starts threatening my family, my life. ‘Oh you’re dead. I’m gonna kill your family and your babies. You’re dead.’ So when he says that, 20 others guys come rushing around the corner. And so I fired four warning shots into the grass,” Grier said.

Read Full Article Here…

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The U.S. Supreme Court extended the reach of the constitutional right to bear arms by saying it binds state and local governments as well as the federal government.

The justices, voting 5-4 in a case involving Chicago’s handgun ban, said that individual gun rights were among the fundamental guarantees protected against state interference through a constitutional amendment after the Civil War.

The ruling broadens the sweep of the court’s 2008 ruling interpreting the Constitution’s Second Amendment as protecting the rights of individuals, rather than just those of state-run militias. It’s a victory for the National Rifle Association, which joined a group of Chicago residents in challenging the city’s laws.

It will open a new front in the fight over gun rights, setting the stage for courtroom battles over the constitutionality of weapons restrictions around the country.

The case is McDonald v. City of Chicago, 08-1521.

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CLEVELAND — One judge’s solution for citizens feeling less secure because of budget cuts in an Ohio county: Carry a gun.

Judge Alfred Mackey of Ashtabula County Common Pleas Court advised residents Friday to be vigilant and arm themselves because the number of deputies has been cut about in half because of a tight budget. He also urged neighbors to organize anti-crime block watch groups.

“They have to be law-abiding, and if they are not familiar with firearms they need to take a safety course so they are not a threat to their family and friends and themselves,” Mackey said Friday.

Mackey, whose comments were first broadcast Thursday by WKYC-TV in Cleveland, was expressing concerns with budget cuts that have trimmed the sheriff’s department from 112 to 49 deputies in the county, which is Ohio’s largest by land area.

Asked by WKYC how people should respond to the cuts and limited patrols, he said, “Arm themselves. Be very careful and just be vigilant because we’re going to have to look after each other.”

Andrew Pollis, who teaches law at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, saw the original TV clip of Mackey and said it was clear the judge wasn’t advocating vigilantism.

Still, Pollis said, snippets of the comments could be misunderstood “as a license, if you will, to engage in conduct which we as a society collectively would not want.”

In Akron, Summit County Common Pleas Judge Patricia Cosgrove, president-elect of the Ohio Common Pleas Judges Association, said she was surprised by Mackey’s suggestion.

“That’s scary to me,” she said. “I don’t know what the situation in Ashtabula County is. I personally would never — that’s a personal choice in terms of carrying a weapon.”

With deputies assigned to transport prisoners and serve warrants, only one radio car is assigned to patrol the county of 720 square miles, excluding municipalities with police departments. The sheriff’s patrol area covers most of the county, the judge said Friday.

Mackey said the response to his comments has been positive in the mostly rural county between Cleveland and Erie, Pa.

“People in this county are hunters,” said Mackey, who grew up on a farm with rifles and still owns firearms. “People have familiarity with firearms.”

Messages seeking comment on the judge’s remarks were left for Sheriff William Johnson and county commissioners.

Johnson has threatened to sue the commissioners to have some of his department’s funding restored.

The jail in the county of about 100,000 people has held as many as 140 prisoners, but the number has dipped to about 30 because of reductions in the guard staff. About 700 people are on a waiting list to serve time in the jail.

Ohio has had a concealed handgun law for five years, and from October to December the Ashtabula County sheriff issued 54 licenses. Twenty-eight licenses were renewed.

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The US Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday in a case that could affect the ability of states and cities to pass gun bans, and, more broadly, could shift the balance of power between the states and Washington.

If the Supreme Court rules in favor of a challenge to Chicago’s ban on handguns, it could lead to a slew of challenges against state laws on everything, not just guns.

The Supreme Court will rule on McDonald v. City of Chicago, a case in which a Chicago resident has challenged that city’s handgun ban as unconstitutional.

But the case goes much further than the typical bickering over the Second Amendment. That’s because it has more to do with the 14th Amendment than it does with the Second.

In 2008, the Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia’s law restricting handgun possession, on the grounds it violated the Second Amendment. But that didn’t settle the issue because, as Laura E. Davis reports at Yahoo News, Washington, DC, is federal territory. And the Supreme Court has long maintained that the Second Amendment doesn’t apply the same way to state laws as it does to federal laws.

But the challenge to Chicago’s handgun ban isn’t about the Second Amendment; it’s about the 14th Amendment, which states that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”

So if the Supreme Court rules Chicago’s handgun ban unconstitutional — which many observers say is likely, given the court’s conservative leanings in recent years — it would likely be on the grounds that the law “abridged the privileges or immunities” of a US citizen.

The result, Davis argues at Yahoo News, could be a slew of challenges to state laws — any state law that a challenger believes “abridges” his or her “privileges or immunities.”

The potential implications of this case are huge – and not just for gun rights. If the privileges-or-immunities argument prevails, it would bring back a constitutional argument that has been effectively dead since 1873, when a decision (known as the Slaughter-House cases) said that the clause only protects rights of national citizenship. But if the court reinterprets this clause, the wording is so broad that some think it could bring a flood of challenges to numerous other laws. Others fear a privileges-or-immunities revival will lead to too much judicial subjectivity.

Davis notes that, if the court does rule to strike down Chicago’s handgun ban, “it will almost certainly have to contradict its rulings in earlier cases.”

Given the court’s recent leanings, such as its decision to overthrow decades of legal precedent to end restrictions on corporate campaign spending, that doesn’t seem to be an unlikely scenario.

‘Chosen as lead plaintiff because he is African-American’

The Chicago Tribune reports that the challenge to Chicago’s handgun ban was crafted by the same lawyer who challenged the Washington, DC, ban before the Supreme Court two years ago. The paper notes that the lead plaintiff was chosen precisely because he doesn’t fit the stereotype of a “gun nut” — he’s a black man who votes Democrat.

Alan Gura, the Virginia-based attorney who successfully argued the Heller case, had spread the word that he was looking for litigants in Chicago. … His goal was to find a diverse group of individuals willing to represent the cause.

He eventually settled on four people: Adam Orlov, a white, 40-year-old libertarian … David Lawson, a white, 44-year-old software engineer … Lawson’s wife, Colleen, a multiracial 51-year-old hypnotherapist … and [Otis] McDonald.

Amid the clamor of the gun-rights debate, McDonald presents a strongly sympathetic figure: an elderly man who wants a gun to protect himself from the hoodlums preying upon his neighborhood. … McDonald and three co-plaintiffs were carefully recruited by gun-rights groups attempting to shift the public perception of the Second Amendment as a white, rural Republican issue. McDonald, a Democrat and longtime hunter, jokes that he was chosen as lead plaintiff because he is African-American.

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Police and Prosecuters openly admit on TV to stealing mans firearms…WTF

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The United Nations and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are moving forward with their plan to confiscate your guns.

The United States joined 152 other countries in support of the Arms Trade Treaty Resolution, which establishes the dates for the 2012 UN conference intended to attack American sovereignty by stripping Americans of the right to keep and bear arms.

Working groups of anti-gun countries will begin scripting language for the conference this year, creating a blueprint for other countries when they meet at the full conference.

The stakes couldn’t be higher.

Former United Nation’s ambassador John Bolton has cautioned gun owners about the Arms Trade Treaty and says the UN “is trying to act as though this is really just a treaty about international arms trade between nation states, but there’s no doubt that the real agenda here is domestic firearms control.”

Establishing the dates for the Arms Trade Treaty Conference is just the first step toward their plans for total gun confiscation.

The worldwide gun control mob will ensure the passage of an egregious, anti-gun treaty…

. . .and that’s where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton steps in.

Once the UN Gun Ban is passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations it must be ratified by each nation, including the United States.

As an arch enemy of gun owners, Clinton has pledged to push the U.S. Senate to ratify the treaty. She will push for passage of this outrageous treaty designed to register, ban and CONFISCATE firearms owned by private citizens like YOU.

That’s why it’s vital you sign the special petition I’ve made up for your signature that DEMANDS your U.S. Senators vote AGAINST ratification of the UN’s “Small Arms Treaty.”

Read the rest of the article

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Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Monday, Jan 18, 2010

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is actively issuing directions banning private sales of guns without licenses at gun shows in Texas, despite there being no law to justify such demands.

A caller to the Alex Jones show brought attention to BATF notices handed out at the entrance of the Texas Gun And Knife Show, on North Lamaar, in Austin this past weekend.

The flyers (pictured below) state that anyone selling a firearm “will be asked to comply with” conditions including operating through a licensed FFL dealer.

The notice also states that “Selling firearms in the parking lot will not be permitted.”

“The lady at the front desk used her ‘mommy voice’ to get everyone’s attention.” Scott from Austin told The Alex Jones show, noting that the owners of the private building where the gun show was held were contacted by the APD and the BATF and directed to hand out the notices.

Scott also told listeners that a petition in protest of the directions was being handed around at the show.

Other attendees posted the flyer on web forums. One poster noted:

“Here is a public notice from a gun show in Austin, Texas this weekend. Do any fellow Texans know of any law changes that took effect recently that make person-to-person gun sales illegal? Has anyone else seen similar notices?”

“It was not handed out in the parking lot, it was posted at the entrance of the venue.” The forum user writes.

“I spoke with the man who runs the gun show and he said he was told on Thursday to post this (the gun show was Saturday and Sunday). Of course, the owner of the venue has the right to prohibit almost anything he wants on his property, but that’s not what this notice says. It says ‘at the direction of the Austin Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms’ and that’s what bothers me.”

The direction “asks” visitors to comply with its demands precisely because there is no law or regulation against private gun sales.

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