David Kopel blogs about the new Illinois law that “prevents the conviction of a person for violating the handgun ban, if the person used the handgun for lawful self-defense on his property.”
This law strikes me as pretty silly: If I had a handgun in my home, I would be found guilty if I voluntarily let the police in for a search, or if a guest reports me to the police, or if a passerby reports seeing it through a window, or if I have a fire and the firemen discover it. But if I use the gun, my past possession of it is suddenly okay after all?
In some ways, this tracks with common police discretion. I know of several cases in which a homeowner used a not-quite-legal gun in Chicago and wasn’t prosecuted. This law is a sort of tacit permission to have a gun, as long as you aren’t blatent about it and don’t use it except in an emergency. So if I decide to break the law, I won’t be punished for using the gun, but I will be punished if I get unlucky and it’s discovered some other way. This is going to produce some strange incentives.
If they City of Chicago has some smart people running it, maybe they’ll realize that the best way to handle this is to start allowing handguns with registration.
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