Gov. JB Pritzker signed into legislation two gun security payments Monday, together with a measure that fines gun house owners in the event that they don’t maintain their weapons correctly saved round minors.
The Secure Gun Storage Act requires house owners to maintain firearms in a locked field wherever a minor may acquire entry to it. Handed within the Illinois Home on the finish of Could, the invoice additionally applies to weapons left unsecured round people legally prohibited from dealing with a gun and people thought of prone to trying suicide or inflicting bodily hurt to themselves or others.
Fines of as much as $10,000 might be handed down if the gun is utilized in a criminal offense, or leads to damage or demise, and it may lead to misdemeanor legal expenses.
“I’m drained, frankly, of treating one thing fully preventable as inevitable,” Pritzker mentioned Monday forward of signing the payments. “I’m uninterested in listening to ideas and prayers after which nothing will get completed, so Illinois is standing up and doing one thing about it.”
Firearms are the main reason for demise of kids in the USA, in response to a examine revealed in JAMA Pediatrics in June. Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton mentioned the payments signed into legislation will assist remove the chance of gun violence and empower Illinois households to really feel safer of their communities.
“The laws we have fun immediately will not be about taking issues away from folks,” Stratton mentioned. “It’s about mandating easy protections that may save lives, as a result of too usually weapons find yourself within the arms of those that can’t perceive the ability of the article they maintain.”
Underneath the Secure Gun Storage Act, house owners may also must report misplaced or stolen weapons inside 48 hours of figuring out that their firearms are gone, as a substitute of the presently required 72 hours. Illinois State Police will probably be allowed to revoke firearm house owners identification playing cards of people who fail to report misplaced or stolen weapons greater than as soon as.
The second invoice Pritzker signed requires legislation enforcement companies in Illinois to make use of a federal firearm tracing system to trace weapons and assist in investigations.
Companies will make the most of eTrace, an software used to trace the acquisition and use historical past of firearms utilized in violent crimes, and to spice up the tracing of weapons used illegally or discovered at crime scenes.
Illinois Legal professional Basic Kwame Raoul mentioned the invoice will assist enhance gun crime knowledge reporting and assist hint not simply those that pull the set off, but in addition individuals who site visitors firearms, in addition to people who use those self same weapons in numerous crimes.
Pritzker described the 2 payments as “frequent sense measures” that may promote gun security all through the state. They may each go into impact subsequent yr.
