BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation today filed an important amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court supporting a challenge of New York State’s restrictive concealed carry permitting scheme by the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association.

Sunday August 1, 2021, will be the beginning of squirrel season in Illinois.  This will kick off the Fall hunting seasons.  There are those who turn their nose up at eating squirrel but they have never had these little bushy-tails well prepared.  They are delicious.  Once when I was hunting with my wife’s uncle who was an avid squirrel hunter, I brought three bushy tails home.  That night we were having friends over for dinner.  I carefully prepared the squirrels, boned them, diced up the meat and put it on top of a pizza.  While we were eating dinner, our friends commented on how good the pizza was.  When I told them that I put squirrel meat on as a topping, they stopped eating the pizza.  It’s the thought that counts.  For those hunters who have not gotten their FOID card renewed, you need not worry about being stopped by the Conservation Police, it does not matter.  Make sure you have your Illinois Hunting License because that does matter.

As predicted, the 4th of July violence broke out in Chicago despite extra police presence in certain parts of the city.  The rough totals for the weekend were 108 shot and 17 dead.  Actually, that was much less than I expected.  In the South Austin area, a gunman opened fire on three people, killing one of them and wounding two.  A witness to the shooting was an Illinois Concealed Carry License (ICCL) holder who shot the gunman, preventing the death of the two wounded people.  As I often mention, when an attack occurs, the only people there are the attacker and the intended victims.  This attack was probably over in under 10 seconds despite having 5 people involved.  That is how fast these things happen.  We have over 410,000 ICCLS in Illinois but that isn’t enough.

According to reports, NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) denied about 300,000 firearm purchases in 2020.  The complete analysis of all of this won’t be done for a while.  The anti-gun groups and their cohorts in the press would have you believe the people denied were all killers but that is not true.  If we look back into the past, we can find a few patterns that will most likely apply to the latest data.  About 99% of the denials were false positives which accounts for so few prosecutions.  False “Red Flag” confiscations, unjustified protection orders, attempts by illegal aliens and defective applications make up most of the denials.  It is true there were some attempts by criminals.  It takes three or four years to see how all of this comes together.  In 2017, there were only 12 prosecutions because of NICS denials.  

Both numbers of FOID card holders and ICCL holders is up and I am expecting those numbers to rise even further.  I keep getting calls from reporters asking why these numbers keep increasing.  If you look around and see what is happening in the United States the answer is obvious.  Moreover, we are just at the beginning of the long hot Illinois summer in addition to a long Fourth of July weekend.  I predict things could get pretty rough in some cities with Chicago being number one on that wild list.