Report: Only 1% of Illinois Gun Owners Comply with ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban

WBEZ reported that only one percent of individuals holding Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) cards had complied with Illinois’s “assault weapons” ban registration requirement as of January 11, 2024.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) signed the “assault weapons” ban into law on January 10, 2023, after which his office released a statement that said, in part, “The new law also requires existing owners of semi-automatic rifles to register their ownership, ensuring that law enforcement knows the location of these weapons of war and who to hold accountable if they fall into the wrong hands.”

Owners of firearms, which Democrats categorize as “assault weapons,” were required to register their guns before January 1, 2024. WBEZ’s report on compliance as of January 11, 2024, shows that there has been little to no additional registration by the deadline, as the Chicago Sun-Times reported that “only 1% of people with firearm owners identification cards in the state had registered.”

The Sun-Times spoke with Illinois State Police about the non-compliance, who said, “Decisions on how to enforce [the ‘assault weapons’ ban]  will be up to each law enforcement and prosecutorial jurisdiction within Illinois.”

On December 29, 2023, the Courthouse News Service noted that enforcement of the “assault weapons” ban largely falls on the sheriffs of Illinois’s 102 counties. And just days after the “assault weapons” ban was signed, Breitbart News pointed out that 80 sheriffs made it clear that they would not enforce it.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.