The publicly cocksure of himself Democrat Rep. Bob Morgan has increasingly shown he’s an angry little man in private. He’s incensed that law-abiding gun owners by the millions are ignoring the gun registration mandate in his pet gun control bill that Gov. JB Pritzker signed on January 10th of last year. He and the worst of the worst of the gun grabbers are thinking a couple of steps ahead on how they can try to turn humiliating non-compliance into a political win.
Yep, instead of sending teams out to hammer gang members in Chicago and other larger locales who are shooting up their cities, Lil Bob Morgan and friend want to send out special Illinois State Police teams (buttressed by officers from sympathetic agencies) to do “gun enforcement raids” of FOID-holders who may or may not have registered their “banned” self-defense guns, accessories and .50BMG ammunition.
See, Bob Morgan doesn’t like gun owners. Gun owners can protect themselves and their families without waiting for the police to arrive. They don’t “need” anyone else to perform their protective duties to their significant others and their offspring. You’ve heard of mama bears and papa bears? Well nothing makes sharp claws quite like a firearm.
Even single women can defend themselves against multiple, much physically stronger attackers thanks to a firearm.
Like the old Colt commercial: God created man and woman. Sam Colt made them equal.
People of the gun rely on themselves instead of government, and by extension, politicians like Bob Morgan and JB Pritzker.
Gun owners are typically successful, smart and law-abiding. They also tend to be self-reliant and independent, too. Not Bob Morgan’s preferred low-information type of voters.
Obviously the gun controllers in Illinois wish they had a gun registry from the past thirty years. They don’t have a registry, but they have something that’s almost as good: The FTIP registry.
Typically, when the Illinois State Police are tracing a gun involved in an investigation of some sort, they’ll consult their historical database of FTIP approvals. They’ll contact the dealers from which they’ve issued those FTIP approval(s) and ask that dealers fax back the ATF Form 4473s related to those FTIP approvals. With that they have the make, model and serial number of the purchased firearm, along with the date it was picked up.
Now the ISP is supposed to have a subpoena to get those records, but many dealers have in the past just returned the forms for a simple ask. In short, the dealers are trusting the ISP not to abuse the process. However, that trust may soon be unfounded as ISP comes under orders from JB Pritzker to help nab some gun purchasers who aren’t conforming to the “Protect Illinois Communities Act” registration requirement.
Let’s say they’re looking into some guy by the name of Joe Sixpack. Joe’s been what Rep. Bob Morgan considers a “prolific” purchaser. He’s bought an average of one gun every year from the past twenty years, sometimes more. That puts the man firmly in the basket of deplorables.
What’s more, when ISP does a very quick search of their registration affidavits, they can’t find any Joseph Sixpacks in their database.
What Rep. Bob Morgan and his buddies are trying to do is find a sympathetic jurisdiction (Lake, Cook and Champaign Counties: here’s looking at you) to do some compliance checks on those buyers. First, they will find the most prolific buyers (from the FTIP approval list) and then open an “investigation” of those law-abiding gun owners. They’ll send out those requests to dealers to pull the 4473s and fax them to ISP as part of an “investigation.” Some sharp-eyed dealers may demand to see a subpoena with a judge’s signature. If the ISP or a surrogate agency can’t get a cooperating judge to sign off on a formal subpoena, then ISP won’t get a complete list, but it’ll be fairly complete due to trusting gun dealers (or the ATF registry from dealers who have gone out of business). If the ISP finds banned guns on the purchase list, but not on the registry, they’ll have a reason to send a “gun compliance team” out to that gun owner’s residence to do a “knock and talk.”
Some have even suggested that Bob Morgan and friend want to come up with a way to get a valid search warrant for this fishing excursion.
The highly-trained and experienced ISP investigators may buffalo their way into the homes of some. The “gun compliance teams” will seek “voluntary” compliance in the form of the gun owner surrendering their banned guns in exchange for empty promises of “leniency.” They might even prefer to talk to the wives of these gun owners figuring the women will be easier to sweet-talk (intimidate?) into compliance. Or maybe even better yet, minor (teenage) children. Yes, if your teen (or even younger) child admits police into your home for a consensual search, that search may not be thrown out!
Or they may find a gun owner more like yours truly who tells them to go pound sand and come back with a warrant. “In the meantime, get off my lawn.”
“Oh, but Mr. Sixpack, if you cooperate with us today we’ll make sure that we’re as lenient as possible when we write our report. You want to be seen as a good guy, right?”
In the words of Justin Bieber (congrats on this video now up to 1.8 BILLION views):
The moral of the story: don’t talk to the police. Don’t answer any questions. Definitely don’t sign anything and whatever you do, NEVER consent to searches.
Quick reminder: a “lenient” felony is still a life-changing felony.
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