A liberal billionaire with a security detail, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker hates that regular people have guns, but what he hates even more is that he doesn’t know who owns guns. That’s why he’s pushed the Orewellian-named Protect Illinois Communities Act, a registry of those who own an AR-15, the most popular rifle in the United States.
Responding to the mass shooting in Maine, where a suspect who had been committed to a mental hospital before being released and thus was banned from having a gun, killed 18 people and injured dozens of others, Gov. J.B. Pritzker Friday said the Illinois government would continue to do everything it can to disarm the public (rather than treat the mentally ill).
“But it is very hard if we don’t have a federal law that bans those kinds of weapons,” Pritzker said.
He might want to start at home. The people of Illinois are having none of what Pritzker is selling and ignoring the gun registry.
According to Illinois State Police data, 2,415,481 gun owners call the Land o’ Lincoln home. Earlier this year, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the so-called Protect Illinois Communities Act into law which banned the most many of the most popular guns used for self-defense. Under the law, existing owners of these now verboten firearms must register their guns by January 1, 2024 or face felony charges, explains one pro-Second Amendment outlet.
Four weeks into the gun registration window, exactly 2430 of those FOID holders have registered their guns, accessories, or .50 caliber firearms. That works out to .1006%, or about one in a thousand.
What’s even more remarkable is the number of FOID holders choosing to comply has fallen with each passing week.
In other words, Illinois gun owners have declined to participate in the state’s gun ban.
Pritzker is only doing what the Biden administration wishes it could do at the national level. Earlier in the week, Vice President Kamala Harris, during a luncheon with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, cited Australian gun confiscation as proof that mass shootings can be easily prevented.
“As we gather details, we must continue to speak the truth about the moment we are in,” Harris said. “In our country today, the leading cause of death of American children is gun violence. Gun violence has terrorized and traumatized so many of our communities in the United States.”
“And let us be clear, it does not have to be this way — as our friends in Australia have demonstrated,” she continued to applause.
According to the Australian Parliament’s official website, noted Fox News, “there is no legal right to gun ownership in Australia ‘in contrast to the position in the United States.’
In addition, Australian law requires individuals to prove they have a genuine reason for owning a firearm. Self-protection is not considered to be a genuine reason under that statute.
Further, the nation’s laws further mandate that individuals who purchase firearms must have a license and each firearm they own must each be individually registered. Such a requirement, according to the Australian Parliament brief, contrasts with New Zealand and Canada which require firearm purchasers to obtain a license, but allows them to freely purchase firearms after obtaining said license.
Australia’s crackdown on firearm ownership came in 1996 following a spate of widely-publicized mass shootings. The so-called 1996 National Firearms Agreement banned automatic and semi-automatic firearms, introduced firearm registration, established stricter storage requirements for all firearms, and tightly restricted non-military style semi-automatic rifles and shotguns purchases.”
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