Jeanne Ives says that lawmakers in Springfield are focusing on all the wrong things in their attempts to curb Illinois’s rising gun violence.
“Once again, Chicago and suburban-area Democratic legislators are pushing anti-gun bills that will do nothing to solve the gun violence that is endemic in their region,” Ives told the DuPage Policy Journal. “They do not want to address the underlying problem of gang activity, broken homes and the sheltering of criminals by neighbors afraid to cooperate with the police that are creating the environment where criminals thrive and hide.”
Ives, a former state representative from Wheaton who also ran for governor in the Republican primary, argues that too much of the focus has become about legal gun owners, as evidenced by a slew of anti-gun bills now making their way through the legislature.
Illinois State Representative Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton)
According to the Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA), House Bill 174 would punish gun owners for not reporting a stolen firearm within 72 hours by stripping them of their FOID cards, House Bill 899 would allow the State Police to revoke the FOID card of a gun owner for a year if they report three separate incidents in a two-year period and Senate Bill 121 seeks to place a penny sales tax on every round of ammunition sold in the state.
“These bills only serve to hurt law-abiding gun owners,” Ives added. “The legislators should be asked to quantify the number of law-abiding gun owners that have their weapons stolen and do not report it. I bet that number is nearly zero. The last thing we need is an additional tax on anything, including ammunition.”
Ives, who relinquished her seat in the 42nd District at the start of the legislative session, narrowly lost out to Gov. Bruce Rauner for the Republican nomination in November.
Alerts Sign-up