Illinois State Police enforcing state’s gun ban, reveal one case under investigation

[January 31, 2023]  By Greg Bishop | The Center Square

(The Center Square) – Illinois State Police say they took enforcement action against a business for openly advertising the sale of newly banned weapons, but no additional information was provided.

In a YouTube video Friday, gun-rights advocate Todd Vandermyde revealed he’d been told that the state is taking actions to enforce the state’s ban on certain semiautomatic guns and magazines.

“It appears that there was a gun shop that was selling stuff, post the enactment,” Vandermyde said after sharing an anonymous tip that state police confiscated weapons from an individual.

Monday, a spokesperson for Illinois State Police confirmed in a statement to The Center Square that ISP took enforcement action earlier this month against a business for “openly advertising the sale of banned weapons.” The statement said the investigation is ongoing and additional information wasn’t immediately available.

Vandermyde cautioned what he sees transpiring.

Cook County Sheriff “Tom Dart and everybody can say there aren’t going to be house-to-house searches, I would beg to differ with you, sheriff,” Vandermyde said.

While Dart has said they will enforce the gun ban, most of the state’s 102 sheriffs have said they won’t.

ISP said Monday state police are “charged with upholding all state laws, including enforcement of businesses that openly violate current laws.”

The law is being challenged in several state and federal judicial circuits.

In McHenry County Monday, a motion was made to move its gun-ban challenge from state court to federal court.

In several separate pending federal cases, ISP made a motion to consolidate into a Crawford County case last week. Chief U.S. District Judge Nancy Rosenstengel, an Obama appointee, reassigned two of those cases to Stephen McGlynn, a Trump-appointed judge.

“The action arises out of the same facts and is closely related to [the Illinois State Rifle Association's] Harrel, et al. v. Raoul … which was filed before this action and is assigned to District Judge Stephen P. McGlynn,” Rosenstengel said.

The Crawford County case Langley v. Kelly was the first lawsuit filed against Illinois’ gun ban in state court, but it was transferred to federal court after the ISRA case was filed in federal court with a judge assigned.

ISRA’s Ed Sullivan said while there are several independent cases in Illinois courts alleging individuals' Second Amendment rights are being infringed, “we also have to keep an eye on the price elsewhere as well," including a Second Amendment case filed in Maryland

"Because what happens elsewhere certainly can influence what happens here, so I think Maryland is the most obvious target for us to keep an eye out,” Sullivan told The Center Square.

In that Maryland case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit heard oral arguments Dec. 6. It’s unclear when a ruling would be rendered.

Still pending in Illinois federal court is a ruling on a TRO in the challenge of Naperville’s gun ban. The judge in that case Monday notified the state that it is also a defendant after plaintiffs expanded their challenge last week.

In a separate state challenge last week, state Rep. Dan Caulkins, R-Decatur, filed a lawsuit against the state’s gun ban. Caulkins is the lead plaintiff with a new association called Law-Abiding Gun Owners of Macon County.

Attorney Thomas DeVore filed to intervene, claiming he has clients that don’t want to be part of a group he said may not stand legal scrutiny.

“Dan is trying to take the position that my clients are members of an association that they never heard of and they never agreed to join and that could place some risk on them,” DeVore told The Center Square. “The attorney general might want to start deposing them.”

DeVore filed an Effingham County challenge on behalf of 866 named plaintiffs. It is pending an appellate court decision of a lower court’s temporary restraining order blocking the law. A ruling on a TRO is pending in a White County case where DeVore represents nearly 1,700 named plaintiffs.

Caulkins’ attorney Jerry Stock labeled DeVore’s filing as a “side show.” Stock argued he doesn’t need hundreds of plaintiffs in a case to prove the law is unconstitutional.

“There was no way I was going to attempt to represent hundreds of clients when the remedy sought is a judgment, not the temporary time out,” Stock told The Center Square. “While we’ll seek that on this path, the real goal was to knock this legislation out. I thought that my firm taking a fee based on the volume of clients was not something I could be comfortable with ethically.”

Stock said he wasn’t casting aspersions and people can hire any attorney they want, but he “very strongly disagrees” with DeVore’s approach.

“I think it’s a far more liberal way of pursuing the claims,” Stock said. “And not having to implicate every individual gun owner or to charge every individual gun owner a fee, because it just was not necessary.”

A hearing in Caulkins’ case is set for Friday in Macon County.

Greg Bishop reports on Illinois government and other issues for The Center Square. Bishop has years of award-winning broadcast experience and hosts the WMAY Morning Newsfeed out of Springfield.