President Trump Can Lead in Fight Against State-Level 2nd Amendment Infringements
“Karina’s Bill, Named For Little Village Mom Slain By Husband, Heads To Pritzker’s Desk,” Block Club Chicago reported Thursday. “The proposed legislation would clarify the process for confiscating a person’s gun when they are served an order of protection during instances of domestic violence.” (Note: Signing the bill into law has not happened yet at this writing. It may be a done deal when this is posted.)
Is it? Either?
Per Fox 32 Chicago, chief co-sponsor Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid calls it “a critical step towards protecting survivors of domestic violence and making our communities safer. Together, we will continue to push to end gun violence and ensure that everyone in Illinois can live free from fear in their own home.” And it’s “a pivotal victory,” Lt. Governor Julian Stratton chimes in.
How?
“Alleged abuser?” So not only hasn’t the person been tried and convicted, but they may also not have even been charged yet? How is that remotely constitutional? Or effective?
Per a 2023 Block Club Chicago article recounting the murders:
“Jose Alvarez [The husband] sought mental health treatment but was put on a wait list… Alvarez owns a Glock 17 9mm-handgun and had a previously valid FOID card, but it was revoked with the order of protection, McCord said. McCord and Alvarez’s attorney said the order of protection was never served to him.”
It appears the state dropped the ball more than once. And ignored the basic truth that anyone who can’t be trusted with a gun can’t be trusted without a custodian.
If there were actionable evidence and charges against Alvarez, he could have been afforded full due process, brought to trial, and convicted. But that requires work, and it’s much easier for a government that chafes at such bonds to just issue a blanket diktat that makes mere accusations sufficient “justification” to usurp more powers and ignore more rights.
How will the most dangerous offenders, the criminal population that does not obey gun laws or apply for FOID cards to identify themselves to the state, be affected by this new “law”? The answer is, they won’t be.
Instead, a net will be cast that will scoop up the innocent along with the guilty and do further injury to freedom. As colleague Darwin Nercesian, News Field Editor for Firearms News (full disclosure, I am the magazine’s Political Field Editor) reports in his analysis of Karina’s Bill:
“To truly understand the depths of Democrat legislative depravity, let’s first look at the method by which the bill was passed… Just six minutes before the scheduled commencement of the Illinois Executive Committee, the bill was posted, having been stripped completely of its language after the enacting title and replaced with what is called ‘Karina’s Bill.’ The move, executed before the sitting ‘Lame Duck’ session, is called a striking amendment, which differs from a floor amendment proposed in a legislative chamber in that it removes everything after the title and inserts a whole new bill.”
“Karina’s Bill advocates for the use of ex parte hearings to obtain orders of protection, immediately triggering a warrant to confiscate the subject’s firearms and ammunition,” Nercesian notes, explaining “Ex parte… refers to a legal proceeding by which one party communicates directly with a judge without notice to or knowledge of the other party, removing the respondent’s ability to be represented or present their side of a case prior to being stripped of their rights and property.”
The assaults on freedom will “obliterat[e] the Second, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments,” Nercesian observes, noting the burden of regaining rights is on individuals victimized by the edict, which “holds agencies completely without liability for damage or destruction to property while it is in their custody.”
“What are you going to do about it, President Trump?”
Some may wonder what he can do. After all, these are state laws, the president isn’t supposed to be a dictator, and federalism is supposed to limit how much power the national government can exert over the states. And don’t forget the Tenth Amendment, reserving power “to the States respectively, or to the people.”
First, states have agreed the Constitution is “the supreme Law of the Land” and “the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers… of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.” They can no more legitimately violate the Second Amendment than they can any other right.
And as I proposed in a November Firearms News column:
“Imagine now the Department of Justice under an actual Second Amendment advocate, and what it could do fighting infringements and prohibitionist lawfare waged by states with unlimited tax war chests in tandem with Astroturf prohibitionist groups funded by antigun elites. Right now, the costs to defend against these innumerable assaults on all levels are borne by gun rights groups and members of mostly modest means who can only support a fraction of what is needed. That equation could be turned on its head.”
And that would include enforcing the Second Amendment against state infringements, exactly as precedent has been established against abridgments of other civil rights.
Or we could listen to NRA instead and “Take Action Now!” by politely asking Illinois Democrats not to vote for the bill.
Too late, they already have. So, the question now becomes “Will President Trump do anything about it?”