The horrific mass shooting at Highland Park’s Fourth of July parade last year demanded swift, resolute action — and the Illinois General Assembly delivered.
The passage of the Protect Illinois Communities Act makes the state safer by banning high-powered firearms, and magazines with more than 10 rounds for long guns and more than 15 rounds for handguns. People who own assault-style rifles before the ban took effect will have to register their weapons (via a serial number) beginning next year, or face a misdemeanor charge for a first offense, and a felony charge for subsequent violations.
A law, however, is only as good as a society’s commitment to enforcing that law. And across Illinois, law enforcement officials are abandoning that commitment.
Sheriffs in dozens of counties — by some counts, as many as 80 counties — have declared they will not enforce the new assault weapons ban. It doesn’t matter that Gov. J.B. Pritzker has signed the measure into law — they don’t agree with the ban and apparently have no compunction about ignoring it.
“The right to keep and bear arms for defense of life, liberty and property is regarded as an inalienable right by the people,” Edwards County Sheriff Darby Boewe wrote in a letter posted on his office’s Facebook page. “Therefore, as the custodian of the jail and chief law enforcement officer for Edwards County … neither myself or my office will be checking to ensure that lawful gun owners register their weapons with the State, nor will we be arresting or housing individuals that have been charged solely with noncompliance of this act.”
In an interview with Quad Cities television station WQAD, Whiteside County Sheriff John Booker brought up the tired gun rights trope that people, and not guns, are the problem. “You can lay a gun on the table,” he said, ”it’s not going to hurt anybody. It’s a person that has to pick that gun up and shoot somebody.”
Booker also said, with striking defiance : “People don’t understand that, as the sheriff, we’re the keeper of the jails. We do have a say on who can come in and out of our jails.”
Even in DuPage County, where Democrats have amassed much more clout and now have one of their own, Deb Conroy, as county board chair, Republican Sheriff James Mendrick declared that his office will not enforce the new law, which he called “a clear violation” of the Second Amendment.
To Sheriffs Booker, Mendrick, Boewe and every other sheriff hopping on the “Don’t Tread on Me” bandwagon: You don’t get to choose which laws to enforce and which to ignore. You and every other sheriff, police chief, officer and prosecutor took an oath to uphold the law. And violating that oath carries consequences.
Pritzker has said sheriffs or any other law enforcement official who refuses to comply with the new law faces termination. That’s exactly the stance the governor needs to take.
Like any other citizen, sheriffs have a right to express their views, particularly political viewpoints since the office of sheriff is typically an elected post. But there’s a difference between freedom of expression and dereliction of duty. Law enforcement officers violate their sworn duty when they decide a particular law doesn’t fit their politics, and therefore should go unenforced.
The firestorm over the new law comes as no surprise. Many issues cleave this nation, and gun control is at the top of the list. All but two Illinois House Republicans voted against the assault weapons ban, and in the state Senate no GOP members voted for it. Most Republican legislators wrongly believe that the new law represents a massive impingement on the Second Amendment rights of gun owners. It doesn’t.
Simply put, banning assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines are commonsense measures that take off the streets the kind of weaponry linked to so many of this country’s deadliest mass shootings. The legislation also sensibly bans so-called switches, devices that can turn an ordinary gun into a semi-automatic or automatic weapon.
And it strengthens Illinois’ red flag law, which allows police or family members to seek a court order to confiscate guns from individuals who are deemed “an immediate and present danger” to themselves or others. Under the old law, the court order, known as a firearm restraining order, lasted for six months. The Protect Illinois Communities Act extends the duration of that order to a year.
Backlash against the new assault-style weapons ban isn’t only coming from county sheriffs. The fight has already shifted to the courtroom. At least three lawsuits against the new law have been filed, the latest by the Illinois State Rifle Association, which is challenging the ban’s constitutionality in federal court.
How well the new law will hold up in court remains unknown. Illinoisans can expect the legal wrangling to last months, if not longer. In the meantime, however, the Protect Illinois Communities Act is enforceable law, and all officers — from beat cop to sheriff — owe it to the people they serve to do their job and enforce what’s on the books.
Sheriffs don’t let murderers go because they think there is a chance they may win a future appeal.
And the last time we checked, a sheriff is neither a judge nor a magistrate with the authority to determine whether a law is unconstitutional.
Yes, Sheriff Booker, you run the Whiteside County Jail. But it’s current Illinois law that should guide you when deciding who gets locked up and who doesn’t — not your personal politics.
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