Illinois has banned assault weapon ownership. But local sheriffs say they won’t enforce it. Now what?

“No one knows” is the short answer.

DAVE BYRNES / December 29, 2023

Three variations of the AR-15 assault rifle are displayed at the California Department of Justice in Sacramento on Aug. 15, 2012. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP)

CHICAGO (CN) — There are 102 counties in Illinois. Each has a sheriff. One hundred and two men — and they’re all men — who enforce state law.

Except when they don’t.

Since the start of the year, a majority of county sheriffs in Illinois have stated that they don’t plan to enforce the Protect Illinois Communities Act, a sweeping ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines state lawmakers passed in January.

What the sheriffs oppose specifically is PICA’s effect on private assault weapon owners. The law not only prohibited the sale and purchase of new assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, but also forbid, with some exceptions, their private ownership. One of those exceptions was a grandfather measure ensuring those who already owned assault weapon could keep their guns and weapon accessories so long as they registered them with the Illinois State Police before New Year’s Day, 2024.

Since the registration portal opened in October, about 52,000 people have done so.

After New Years Day, at least in theory, anyone found owning an unregistered assault weapon or extended magazine could face criminal penalties. But in the days after Democratic Gov. J. B. Pritzker signed PICA into law, sheriffs across the state issued statements saying they believe the bans violate the Second Amendment.

Though a few sheriffs who opposed the ban, like Will County Sheriff Mike Kelley, simply voiced their opposition without saying what it means in practical terms, dozens of others weren’t so coy.

“I, among many others, believe that [the Protect Illinois Communities Act] is a clear violation of the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution,” read a near-identical statement issued by sheriffs across the state in January. “Therefore, as the custodian of the jail and chief law enforcement official for_______ County, that neither myself nor my office will be checking to ensure that lawful gun owners register their weapons with the State (sic), nor will we be arresting or housing law abiding individuals that have been arrested solely with non-compliance of this Act.”

Since the sheriffs issued their statements, the bans have survived numerous challenges at the state and federal level, ultimately prevailing in both the Illinois Supreme Court and the federal Seventh Circuit of Appeals.

The U.S. Supreme Court has also declined to hear challenges to the ban on not one but two occasions, and just last week even a conservative federal judge in southern Illinois declined to strike down PICA’s Jan. 1 registration requirement on a 14th Amendment challenge.

As far as the government is concerned, it is, at least for now, the law of the land in the Land of Lincoln.

Despite this, Courthouse News could find no examples of a sheriff who, after saying he wouldn’t enforce the bans in January, reversed course and agreed to abide by the courts’ decisions. Of the multiple PICA-opposing sheriffs’ offices CNS reached out to for comment, none responded.

This mass non-compliance presents a major political challenge for Illinois’ ruling Democrats. It doesn’t mean much that the party spent 2023 fighting for PICA in the courts, if those charged with enforcing the law decide they don’t care what the courts say.

It’s also indicative of the cultural and political divides between liberal, urban Chicagoland in northeastern Illinois and the whiter, more conservative, more rural areas to the states’ south and west.

Case in point, among the only sheriffs to support the ban openly are John Idleburg of Lake County, one of the state’s only Black sheriffs, representing the northeastern most county in the state, and Tom Dart, representing Cook County, which includes all of Chicago proper and several more liberal collar suburbs.

“Sheriff Dart has been a staunch supporter of this legislation as it is part of his ongoing mission to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of unlawful owners, especially individuals who have had their Firearm Ownder ID cards revoked and individuals who partake in criminal activity,” Dart’s office told CNS in a prepared statement.

According to University of Illinois – Chicago political science professor Alexandra Filindra, who has extensively researched the confluence of guns, policing and politics, the divide between liberal Chicago legislators passing stricter gun laws and conservative downstate sheriffs refusing to enforce them is the latest iteration of a conflict going back to the founding of the country and the socioeconomic premises it was founded upon.

At the center of the debate, she said, is the question of who gets to be a “good American” and who gets labeled as those good Americans’ enemies.

Historically, she explained, the “good Americans” have been white, Christian, property-owning men. And being a good American is more than just belonging to an elite social club. By virtue of being white men who own property and profess Christian faith, Filindra said, one’s ability to govern themselves and others is made self-evident.

“This is consistent with ideals of Jeffersonian Democracy, which held that the ‘Good Americans’ were the freeholders,” she said. “It was the property owners who can be trusted with the state.”

Part of being trusted with the state or property, she explained, is the expectation that you will defend it — by force of arms if need be — from the good Americans’ enemies. Not just foreign soldiers, but indigenous peoples, Black slaves, agitating laborers and others.

This call to arms to defend whiteness, home and property from the threat posed by not-good Americans has echoed down the centuries, Filindra said, even being enshrined in deceased, conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion in the 2008 landmark gun rights case District of Columbia v. Heller.

In that case the high court overturned a Washington D.C. law criminalizing handgun possession, with Scalia writing that the Second Amendment “elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.”

Filindra estimated that about 40% of white Americans hold this view still; a view that, as the Illinois sheriffs’ refusal to enforce PICA shows, has concrete effects.

To further drive the point home, she pointed to Effingham County is southern Illinois, which local leaders declared a “Second Amendment Sanctuary” in 2018 — meaning they would not enforce any state laws which could affect gun rights. Dozens of other Illinois counties have since passed similar resolutions, further challenging the state’s authority.

“We have a huge problem where people are turning federalism on its head,” Filindra said. “We are creating a situation where the system is unworkable.”

More practically speaking, Illinois State University legal studies professor Jason Cieslik said downstate sheriffs’ refusals to enforce PICA represent a major affront to the state government’s legitimacy. Police, not politicians, are ultimately the ones walking around with guns, and if law enforcement get away with disobeying the state here, what’s to stop them from blowing off any other law they oppose?

“Where does this begin and where does this end? I don’t know,” Cieslik said.

While those left of center have at times praised law enforcement defying laws they considered unjust, like when Florida State Attorney Andrew Warren refused to enforce anti-trans and anti-abortion laws backed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, Cieslik also worried that this defiance could result in another assault weapon mass shooting like that which occurred on July 4, 2022 in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park and claimed the lives of seven people — the very same mass shooting that prompted PICA’s creation.

Among liberals, the shock and anger that shooting generated only grew when state police revealed the suspected gunman, then-21-year-old Robert Crimo III, had purchased the assault weapon he used in the attack completely legally. He bought the rifle and several others despite a history of violent incidents — while underage, no less — using a valid Illinois Firearm Owner ID card bolstered by his father’s sponsorship of the purchases.

Cieslik worried about a repeat of the incident, with state government left holding the bag for sheriffs’ refusal to rein in unlicensed guns. He urged the state government to get serious about the issue, perhaps even to levy criminal penalties against sheriffs who refuse to enforce the new law.

“You need some prosecutorial authority to step in and say, enough is enough,” Cieslik said.

But it may not be so simple. Cieslik, who has a pending legal review paper on the issue, said “any eighth grader in a civics class” could point out that sheriffs can’t pick and choose which laws to enforce, but wondered aloud if simply stating a refusal to enforce a law is grounds for any kind of legal consequence.

“Are any of these issues ripe? Can they be charged with making these statements right now? I don’t know,” Cieslik said.

It’s also unclear how many state attorneys would be willing to go after others in the law enforcement field. Courthouse News reached out to multiple Illinois state attorneys, specifically in counties where sheriffs had opposed the assault weapon ban, to ask if they would consider action against their county sheriffs.

Only one, the office of DuPage County State’s Attorney Bob Berlin, responded, and even then, it was only to decline to comment.

Pritzker’s office also seems caught in a bind on the issue; though a spokesman issued a statement Friday condemning “political grandstanding,” it did not offer any concrete plans to deal with non-compliant sheriffs.

“Sheriffs have a constitutional duty to uphold the laws of the state, not pick and choose which laws they support and when,” the spokesman said. “We’re confident that this law will hold up to any future legal challenges, but again, it is the current law of our state, and anyone who claims to advocate for public safety and law and order should follow the law.” 

“I see the problem from Pritzker’s position,” Filindra added, considering the issue as the 2024 election cycle looms. “The party’s not going to go that way. It wouldn’t do him any good to create a culture of victimization of… sheriffs, because that’s what the NRA would come out with. They don’t want to give that narrative to Fox News.”

But bad political narratives or not, Cieslik warned that unless the state didn’t act on the sheriffs’ non-compliance, the line between police and judge, enforcing the law and interpreting it, may begin to fade.

“If somebody doesn’t grow some teeth, we’re going to see some blurring of the line,” he said.