Illinois Wants Gun Makers to Pay the State’s Entire Firearm Injury Bill for the Right to Sell There– www.usacarry.com
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EXCERPT:
Key Takeaways
- House Bill 3320 would require firearm manufacturers in Illinois to obtain a state license by January 1, 2028, or face hefty penalties.
- The licensing fees will reflect the public health costs associated with firearm injuries and deaths.
- The bill establishes a fund to assist victims of firearms, financed by the collected fees from manufacturers.
- An amendment proposes a broader regulatory framework that ties fees to the number of crimes associated with a manufacturer’s firearms.
- Both HB 3320 and its Senate counterpart have not yet passed and are currently in committee but have significant support.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
SPRINGFIELD, IL — House Bill 3320, the Responsibility in Firearm Legislation Act, would bar any firearm manufacturer from operating in Illinois without a state license beginning January 1, 2028, and would set the total collected from those licenses at whatever the state calculates as the “public health costs and financial burdens from firearm injuries and deaths.”
The bill, introduced by Rep. Kevin John Olickal, creates the licensing program inside the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. A manufacturer operating in Illinois without that license after January 1, 2028 is subject to a civil penalty of up to $1,000,000 per month. A retailer who sells an Illinois consumer a firearm made by an unlicensed manufacturer is subject to a civil penalty of up to $10,000 per violation. The Department may impose other civil penalties of up to $1,000 per violation, and the Attorney General may enforce the Act.
The fee structure is the part worth reading twice. This is not a charge calibrated to the administrative cost of licensing a regulated business. The bill says the sum of all firearms manufacturer license fees shall be equal to the public health costs and financial burdens from firearm injuries and deaths in Illinois. Whatever number the state assigns to those injuries and deaths becomes the invoice, split among the companies that lawfully manufacture a lawful product.