Illinois Watch List

[Trent]

House bill 4359 was filed yesterday;

Amends the Firearm Owners Identification Card Act. Provides that the Department of State Police has authority to deny an application for or to revoke and seize a Firearm Owner's Identification Card (FOID card) previously issued under the Act if the Department finds that the applicant or the person to whom the card was issued is or was at the time of issuance a person named on the consolidated Terrorist Watchlist maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center administered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation

http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/bil...3&GA=99&DocTypeID=HB&LegID=93077&SessionID=88


Of course there is no way to TELL if you are on the watch list, the FBI does not respond to inquiries by the public. If you are erroneously added you are supposed to contact the agency which lists you on there (with no indication given as to which agency did so).

This is obviously bad news for many reasons; not the least of which is it is a full denial of rights - not just a "cannot buy a gun or pass a NICS check" - this is full on confiscation.

If the person whose FOID card has been revoked fails to comply with the requirements of the Act, the sheriff or law enforcement agency where the person resides shall (rather than may) petition the court for a warrant to search for and seize the person's FOID card and firearms.

(The requirements of the act are you have 5 days to dispose of all of your firearms and turn in proof via disposition form of who & where those firearms went. Failure to comply gets a warrant executed on you to seize firearms.)

All that would be required to have your firearms seized would be getting added to the list. No trial, you are not innocent until proven guilty, you have no recourse to get removed from the list and no way to get your rights restored.

Blatantly unconstitutional, this represents nothing more than a direct avenue to forced confiscation.

If you live in IL, call your reps.

 

[Jeff White]

This kind of stuff is routinely introduced in the Illinois General Assembly. I don't think it will go anywhere. The Chicago Communist coalition has never been able to pass any supremely restrictive legislation on it's own. There is little support for gun control once you get out of Cook, McHenry and Will County and the legislature reflects that.

None the less we need to all express our displeasure with the authoritarians who would deny people their constitutional rights based on a secret list. Here is a list of the co-sponsors and their Springfield office phone numbers:

1. Rep. Greg Harris (217) 782-3835
2. Rep. Lou Lang (217) 782-1252
3. Rep. Deborah Conroy (217) 782-8158
4. Rep. Litesa Wallace (217) 782-3167
5. Rep. Emanuel Welch (217) 782-8120
6. Rep. Christian Mitchell (217) 782-2023
7. Rep. Jaime Andrade, Jr. (217) 782-8117
8. Rep. Martin Moylan (217) 782-8007
9. Rep. Cynthia Soto (217) 782-0150
10. Rep. Mary Flowers (217) 782-4207
11. Rep. Anna Moeller (217) 782-8020
12. Rep. Kathleen Willis (217) 782-3374
13. Rep. John D'Amico (217) 782-8198
14. Rep. Sonya Harper (217) 782-5971
15. Rep. Camille Lilly (217) 782-6400


Remember that there will be a secretary answering the phone so don't let the righteous anger you feel after the onslaught on our civil rights in the press that we have endured in the past couple weeks to show when you call.

As satisfying as it would be to let loose and really explain the world to these people, hostility will hurt our cause.