With One Week Remaining, 99.4% of Illinois Gun Owners Have Said ‘No Thanks’ To Gun Registration

The Democrats who run Illinois decided long ago to blame gun owners for the results of the woke, soft-on-crime policies that have led to proliferating crime in the state. Instead of targeting the relatively small number of violent gang members who make Chicago live up to its Murder City USA moniker, politicians have instead targeted law-abiding gun owners with gun bans and a new gun registration scheme.

The so-called Protect Illinois Communities Act demanded existing owners of particularly frightening firearms register their magazine-fed, semi-automatic rifles. These include guns best-suited to self-defense including America’s favorite rifle, the AR-15.  The law also bans many semi-auto shotguns and handguns. Then there are the accessories and .50 BMG ammunition that must be registered as well.

With a December 31 deadline fast approaching, the Illinois State Police released their Week 11 compliance update on Wednesday and it’s a doozy. While thousands of Illinois gun owners have dutifully complied, millions have not. Holders of 15,164 Firearms Owner ID cardholders have registered an average of about 3.5 covered items each.

Put another way, 2,400,317 FOID holders have registered…nothing. Running that through some public school math, that yields a 99.4% non-compliance rate.

Why are so few Illinois citizens complying? Aside from the fundamental 2A conflicts, there’s also the leak from the Governor’s inner circle to “close the existing owner loophole” as reported by Guns Save Life.

So what is next?  Following a mass-casualty incident, especially if it happens in the Land of Lincoln, the Governor will announce a plan to “close the existing owner loophole.” Their words, not ours.

Governor Pritzker will back legislation to call for those who have registered guns and accessories to surrender those registered items to the police after 90 days or so.  Failure to do so would result in felony charges.

By mandating the surrender of those registered items, they can determine who has complied and who has not. Those who have not can expect ISP-led “firearm compliance teams” to knock on their doors.

That should surprise no one. Firearm registration has always had only one real purpose…to facilitate confiscation when politicians finally get up the testicular fortitude to press their anti-gun antipathy to that extent. That’s always been clear and it’s why there’s a law prohibiting federal firearm registration.

While achieving a compliance rate of more than one percent might be seen as some kind of psychological milestone of “success” by Governor Pritzker, it’s actually a humiliating public repudiation of Pritzker’s radical left anti-gun politics.

The little people have made it perfectly clear that they have no intention of complying with Illinois politicians’ gun-grabbing schemes. Don’t expect their attitude toward “closing the existing owner loophole” to be any more enthusiastic.