Illinois is the only state in the union that requires gun owners to have a current Firearm Owner Identification (FOID card). Congressman Bobby Rush (D- 1st CD) thinks it's time a national FOID card was issued. He also wants all guns to be registered with the Attorney General.
The National Rifle Association is sounding the alarm over Rush's latest introduction of HR 45.
The measure calls for all handgun owners to submit to the federal government an application that shall include, among many other things: a photo; an address; a thumbprint; a completed, written firearm safety test; private mental health records; and a fee. And those are only some of the requirements to be licensed!
The bill would further require the attorney general to establish a database of every handgun sale, transfer, and owner's address in America. Moreover, the bill would make it illegal to own or possess a "qualifying firearm" -- defined as "any handgun; or any semiautomatic firearm that can accept any detachable ammunition feeding device…" [emphasis added] without one of the proposed licenses.
Rush's "Blair Holt Law" is named after a tragic shooting of a young Chicago Public School student who protected his girlfriend from the bullet of an attacker that boarded a school bus and began shooting.
Evidently, the firearm was illegally transported across state lines, and shock! the criminal didn't have the courtesy or fear of the law to check with law enforcement before he obtained the gun and used it to wield havoc among innocent, defenseless minors on a school bus.
We in Illinois may have worn down our resistance and accept invasions of constitutional liberties such as the right for law-abiding citizens to protect themselves from conscience-deprived fellow humans, but that doesn't mean the rest of the nation will subordinate themselves without a fight.
Gun control is the next item on the Obama agenda, after governmentizing our health care. Where will you stand on this one?
