Gun owners in Illinois will soon be required to take additional measures to keep their weapons out of the hands of children under a new law signed Monday by Gov. JB Pritzker.
In addition, law enforcement officers in the state must now start tracing the ownership of any firearm that is recovered from a crime scene, used unlawfully or is believed to be associated with a crime.
Pritzker signed those bills into law at a time when federal courts are growing increasingly skeptical of state and local efforts to curb gun violence. A federal court of appeals is preparing to hear arguments in a challenge to Illinois’ most significant recent gun restriction — a ban on assault-style weapons and large capacity magazines.
“I’m tired, frankly, of treating something completely preventable as inevitable,” Pritzker said at a bill signing ceremony in Chicago. “I’m tired of forcing our children to duck and cover because too many politicians are ducking and covering for the gun industry’s money. I’m tired of hearing thoughts and prayers and then nothing gets done.”
Safe storage requirement
Senate Bill 8, known as the Safe Gun Storage Act, prohibits gun owners from storing their weapons in an unsecured manner at any location where they know, or reasonably should know, that the gun could be accessed by a minor, a person at risk of harming themselves or others, or by a person who is prohibited under state or federal law from possessing a firearm.
To secure the weapon, under the law, owners will be required to keep them in a locked container so that they are inaccessible or unusable by anyone other than the owner.
Gun owners who violate the law could be subject to civil fines of $500. But those fines could go up to $1,000 if a minor, at-risk person or prohibited person obtains the firearm, and as high as $10,000 if such person uses it to kill or injure someone in the course of committing a crime.
In lieu of those fines, courts could instead order the gun owner to perform community service or pay restitution for violating the law. The new law also provides that gun owners could also be subject to civil liability in private lawsuits.
However, the law also provides that gun owners will not be found in violation of the law if a minor, at-risk person or prohibited person obtains their firearm by unlawfully entering the premises.
In addition to the new storage requirements, SB 8 also requires gun owners to report a lost or stolen firearm to law enforcement within 48 hours of discovery, as opposed to the previous 72-hour requirement.
Supporters of the bill pointed to recent statistics showing firearms are now the leading cause of death for children under 18, surpassing motor vehicles and cancer.
“For far too long, we have witnessed the tragic consequences of unsecured firearms in homes,” Sen. Laura Ellman, D-Naperville, the lead Senate sponsor of the bill, said in a statement. “Firearms, if left unaccounted for and unsecured, pose risks to those who shouldn’t have access to them. Firearm owners can help prevent gun-related incidents by ensuring their guns are securely stored and away from others.”
The bill passed 33-19 in the Senate and 69-40 in the House.
The law takes effect Jan. 1.
Firearm tracing
Pritzker also signed a bill Monday requiring law enforcement agencies to trace the ownership of every weapon recovered from a crime scene or that they seize because it was possessed unlawfully, used for an unlawful purpose or they reasonably believe to have been used in a crime.
House Bill 1373, an initiative of Attorney General Kwame Raoul, requires agencies to check those weapons through a web-based system known as eTrace, which is operated by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Prior to the new law, participation in the eTrace system was voluntary.
“We know now that approximately half of shootings nationwide never get solved. Only about a third do here in the city of Chicago,” said Sen. Bill Cunningham, D-Chicago, the lead Senate sponsor of the bill. “We also know that the same gun can often be used again and again in multiple shootings, multiple killings. We need to do something about that. That’s what this bill does. It ensures that all law enforcement agencies report all information they have on a gun anytime they recover it at the scene of a crime.”
The bill passed 75-40 in the House and 43-11 in the Senate. It takes effect immediately.
Legal landscape
Since taking office in 2019, Pritzker has signed numerous bills into law that impose new restrictions on the sale, ownership and possession of firearms. The most significant of those was a 2023 ban on assault-style weapons and large capacity magazines, known as the Protect Illinois Communities Act.
During that same time, however, the U.S. Supreme Court has adopted a more expansive view of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms and imposed new legal standards that make it more difficult for state and local gun control measures to pass constitutional muster.
Most recently, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday, July 24, struck down as unconstitutional a California law requiring background checks for people to purchase ammunition. The court found the law was not consistent with the nation’s “historical tradition” of firearms regulation, a standard the Supreme Court established in 2022, less than a year before Illinois passed its assault weapons ban.
Gun rights organizations are using a similar argument in challenging the Illinois law.
In November, a federal judge in East St. Louis struck down the Illinois law using the same “historical tradition” analysis. But his ruling has been put on hold pending an appeal to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.
In that case, the attorney general’s office has until Aug. 14 to file its final brief. A three-judge panel will then set a date for oral arguments. However the court rules, observers expect the law will eventually be appealed to the Supreme Court.