The Illinois gun dealer licensing law — famous for Springfield Armory and Rock River Arms’ collusion in its passage through the State Senate — is a hit with the civilian disarmament industrial complex. As it heads to the House, our friends at The Trace are all over it, providing justification for a law that serves no practicable purpose. Like this:
The ATF regularly fails to meet its goals for inspecting gun stores, a process that can uncover poor business practices and illegal activity. Earlier this year, the agency announced that gun store thefts — a common source of firearms to criminal markets — had hit an all-time high.
The proposal also comes as Chicago is experiencing a surge in gun violence. Most of the weapons used in Chicago gun crimes are bought or stolen in other places and trafficked into the city.
State Senator Don Harmon, a Democrat from the Chicago suburb of Oak Park who sponsored the legislation, said he hopes that keeping closer tabs on gun stores will illuminate how weapons make their way onto city streets.
“We have a handful of gun dealers in suburban Cook County that are the source of a dramatically disproportionate number of firearms recovered at Chicago crime scenes,” Harmon said. “I’m focused on figuring out why that is.”
Translation: we have to pass the law to see why we need to pass the law. And figure out what other laws we can pass with an equally non-existent chance of affecting Chicago firearms-related crime rates.
More than that, The Trace’s isn’t waiting to “name and shame” so-called “bad apple” gun dealers; dealers who sold a legal product legally. The article uses the picture above captioned “Chuck’s Gun Shop has sold thousands of firearms that were later recovered by police.”
This is the kind of intimidation that Illinois State Senator Don Harmon and his Democratic minions — some of whom received cash donations from Springfield Armory and Rock River Arms — want to enact in Illinois. Pissing on the Constitution’s prohibition against infringing American’s natural and civil right to keep and bear arms.
Why? Because guns. The battle continues . . .