When talking about various anti-gun measures, I don’t like to say that a given thing will never end or will be with us forever, but only because the priorities might shift for gun control groups and politicians, and bad ideas of today might be put aside for tomorrow. After all, I remember when the big gun control push was banning handguns, and for now, those are as safe as they’ve ever been.
But some ideas do feel rather permanent. They’ll be pushed until they pass, unless a court somewhere puts the kibosh on it for that state. Even then, they’ll try to work around it. Look at the carry killer laws, for example.
In Illinois, they’ve got an idea that is so bad, it’s likely to be with us always, and that’s their ammo serialization bill.
Democrat officials in Illinois have long taken unabashed pride in the abridgement of Second Amendment rights, and their latest attempt at “bullet control” is again making headlines. While to many it may appear to be a new frontier for gun control, it is in fact a recycled gun control scheme that appears shiny and new among the onslaught of gun bans and hardware prohibitions in the states.
Illinois HB4414, the Ammo Registration Act, would require that “all handgun ammunition that is manufactured, imported into the State for sale or personal use, kept for sale, offered or exposed for sale, sold, given, lent, or possessed shall be serialized” by January 1, 2027. Additionally, the bill requires each round of ammunition to be tracked and included in a government registry maintained by the Illinois State Police. Of course, to accommodate and fund this onerous new system, a tax of up to five cents per round would be added to ammunition purchases.
While Illinois’ latest in a long line of serialization attempts dating back to 2008 has likely stalled for now, it is important to stay vigilant on the continued war on ammunition in state legislatures and in Congress. Even if legislative efforts go nowhere during one session, the introduction and reintroduction of audacious bills like this helps to normalize concepts over time. The legislative roadmaps for all variations of gun control demonstrate what can happen when opportunity and preparation are combined. When an exploitable episode happens, bills that have hung around for years can suddenly move with unstoppable momentum.
NRA has long warned of political attacks on ammunition and “bullet control,” including in Illinois. The truth remains the same since our alerts on the same effort in 2016: The Truth About Illinois’ Ammo Serial Numbering Scheme, and again in 2021: Ammo Serialization Comes Up Again. A mainstay of international gun control planning, bullet serialization is just one more way to add expense, complexity, and surveillance to the exercise of Second Amendment rights … if it doesn’t effectively ban ammunition altogether.
The fact that this kind of thing sounds so much like an old Chris Rock routine.
However, an Illinois resident reached out to me recently to ask some important questions about this bill, should it come to pass. For example, let’s say that someone buys a box of ammo, then goes to the range and shoots it. Someone else offers to clean up their brass because they reload. That’s still legal in Illinois, and reloaded ammo isn’t required to be serialized under this bill, and it’s an exception to the requirement for all ammo carried to be serialized as well. What happens if that ammo is recovered at a crime scene?
This opens up such a can of worms that Illinois clearly didn’t think this through.
Yet the problem is that I don’t think anyone has the sense to realize that all of these problems are why the bill should just die on the vine and this whole thing be abandoned entirely. No, they know that if they can control the ammo, they can control you.
Criminals won’t care. They’ll just steal ammo if they have to. There will likely be a business of removing serial numbers from rounds, much like there are people who destroy the serial numbers on guns. There will be all kinds of ways around this, especially as these are criminals who simply don’t care. Sure, if they get caught with unserialized ammo, it’s a misdemeanor, but since most of them are carrying a gun in spite of potential felony charges, I doubt they’ll be moved here.
The idea behind something like this is too much of a controlling factor for regular, law-abiding citizens that the anti-gunners aren’t likely to abandon it anytime soon. Yeah, it might have stalled, but if they can’t revive it this year, they’ll be back next year to try all over again.
Bad ideas don’t go away. Not for anti-gunners.
Of course, if this does pass, it would be glorious if all the ammo companies decided to stop selling to Illinois law enforcement agencies. That would be an interesting situation to cover, let me tell ya, and I’d be laughing at Illinois the entire time.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
Help us continue to report on and expose the Democrats’ gun control policies and schemes. Join Bearing Arms VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership.
Read the full article here
