SE Illinois News

State Sen. Darren Bailey, R-Xenia, used his Facebook page to encourage his constituents to fill out witness slips for House Bill 5855.

According to the Illinois General Assembly website, HB 5855 would require the Division of Criminal Investigation of the Illinois State Police to investigate the trafficking of humans, drugs and firearms as required by law and coordinate with law enforcement any information regarding firearms. It also would require anyone under the age of 21 and not serving in the military to seek parental consent to secure a firearm owner’s identification.

“House Bill 5855 seeks to ban certain types of firearms bans certain kinds of magazines, to ban the sale, the manufacturer, the trade, anything. There are some situations where if you own a particular type of firearm you will not be able to give it to your children as an inheritance that's how that's how ridiculous this is,” Bailey said in a video on Facebook. “So I'm asking you please fill out all with the slip.”

An NBC Chicago report noted that if Illinois legislators pass HB 5855, sponsored by State Rep. Bob Morgan, D-Deerfield, the Land of Lincoln would join seven other states that ban assault weapons at least in some fashion. According to the report, those states include California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.

“This isn’t going to stop with just this,” Bailey added in the video on his Facebook page. “This is going to continue it's going to go way past firearms it's going to continue until they hamper and limit these God-given freedoms in this country and until we stand up and say and that's enough.”

The Center Square noted on its website that there are dozens of firearms that fall under the category of assault weapons, including the Weaver Arms Nighthawk pistol, Thompson M1 and 1927 semi-automatics, AR70s, AR-15s, M-21 sniper rifle, and the M1A. Bailey, who lost his bid to unseat Gov. J.B. Pritzker in the November general election, urged constituents to read the Constitution.

“I know it sounds like an arduous task,” he said in the video. “It's not. It will take you about 20 minutes just to read from front to back, and but I looked up the Second Amendment this morning and it's one sentence.”