* Center Square…
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker appeared to concede that his and Democratic lawmakers’ ban on a wide variety of semi-automatic handguns and rifles has a less than 50-50 chance of surviving in the federal court system.
During a discussion the governor’s office said was about “gun violence prevention” at Temple Jeremiah in Northfield Thursday, Pritzker was asked about the chance his ban on certain semi-automatic firearms and magazines survives a challenge in the federal courts.
“It is not zero chance and it is not, you know, 30% chance, I think it’s better than that that we will win,” Pritzker said. “I don’t know what percent to put on it. I just think we have a pretty good argument.”
* What he actually said during the Q and A…
Q: So at the national level, and there was even an article today in the Tribune about this, we seem to have hit a roadblock to pass a Federal Assault Weapons Ban and the Supreme Court’s, particularly Justice Thomas’, rulings in in the cases before the court, the ruling against state gun restrictions. So take out your crystal ball. Where where do you think this is all going?
Pritzker: Where’s this all going? We need to make sure that we get people appointed to the Supreme Court who are going to do the right thing. [Applause]
I do think that that, again, going back to the case that it is likely to be the Illinois case going to the Supreme Court, I do think that we have, you know, I don’t know what percentage chance to put on it. But it is not zero chance and it is not you know 30 percent chance. I think it’s better than that, that we will win. I don’t know what percent to put on it. I just think that we have a pretty good argument. And it’s demonstrated by the quality of the bill that got passed and signed here in Illinois and the commentary of the appellate court judges.
So you know, when you say where’s it all going? We’re in this terrible situation, where essentially it’s been made available to everybody to go by almost any, lots of hand guns are available to everybody in the audience and everybody out there in the world. And more and more of them have been purchased. And I think we have today read that we have 390 million guns in private hands in a country that has about, what, 340 million people in it. And that doesn’t mean that everybody in this room has a gun but it means that somebody else out there has more than one gun. And as I said before, there are lots of people buying guns because they, not because they feel like they should have a gun or you know, but because now they feel like everybody else has a gun. And so they have to protect themselves, or they want to be like their neighbors who are asking, ‘Do you have one? Do you have one?” And so this is the world we’re living in. And I was just abroad in the UK. They can’t believe what’s going on with guns in the United States and they don’t understand how a rational society like ours can let the continuation of the growth of gun ownership, particularly very deadly weapons can continue to harvest among us.
Please pardon all transcription errors.
* More from the Q and A…
Q: Someone’s asking ‘How do you feel about the safe storage laws and Ethan’s law in particular which has a penalty to parents with minors in the house where guns aren’t stored properly or safely?’
Pritzker: I think we need to pass legislation to lock up guns in homes. [Applause] I think if you’re going to own a gun, you have to be responsible with it. And this is one way for us to demand and to ask people to do the right thing and keep them safe in their own homes. So I’ll just leave it there.
* Insurance requirements for gun owners…
Pritzker: That’s not from my perspective about trying to make it expensive or difficult, you know, we can’t put roadblocks just for the sake of roadblocks to people buying guns that are legal to acquire. On the other hand, there is a real problem when guns are misused, not kept properly, loaned out willy nilly to people who shouldn’t have them. People have to be responsible. And I think that being held liable for that means that you’re probably going to, should have, the requirement or at least, we should be contemplating a requirement of people who are going to purchase a gun to have some kind of insurance. I say that though, without having done the research on what is the cost of that insurance, what would be the liability that people would be subjected to. So I don’t want to just make an announcement here that I think, you know, broadly, we ought to require insurance but I do think we’ve got to contemplate it and there should be hearings about it and we should ask the insurance industry and we should also try to understand what the the cost to an individual really would be.
* Taxing ammunition…
Pritzker: I think over the course of the last 35 years that I’ve been engaged in this, that’s certainly something that’s come up quite a lot. Could you just tax bullets, you know, with a high tax and then no one will buy them. I think that the Supreme Court essentially would shut that down because the effectiveness of the Second Amendment, they would say, would be nullified. And again, there may be people you know, who think that we should nullify the Second Amendment, but not the Supreme Court of the United States today.
