Effingham County was the first county in Illinois to pass a firearms sanctuary resolution measure, now other rural communities are following suit in an attempt to protect what they see as protecting their Second Amendment gun rights.
"We saw many bills being proposed by our state legislators that (were) attacking our Second Amendment rights," Effingham County board Vice Chairman David Campbell recently told the East Central Reporter.
"So I decided it was time to take a stand. I saw Iroquois County had written a resolution that we liked so we took portions of it and added some verbiage and made our own. Our state's attorney added the sanctuary clause, making us the first county in the state of Illinois to pass the firearms sanctuary resolution. That was late April. As of today ... we now have confirmed 32 out of 102 Illinois counties that have also passed the resolution and many more counties working on doing so."
Effingham County board Vice Chairman David Campbell
| Effingham Elks
While there are questions about the constitutionality of gun sanctuary cities, Campbell believes the resolutions will "serve notice to the state legislature that responsible gun owners who have broken no laws will no longer sit idly by while bureaucrats with armed guards chip away at the gun rights of the people."
"They embolden the people to take a stand against Chicago elites who don't understand the defense needs of those in rural communities," he said.
Campbell also noted the firearm sanctuary resolutions "provide an additional avenue of defense in court for those arrested for violating unconstitutional gun laws by quietly urging juries to acquit" and "remind law enforcement that enforcing unconstitutional laws is unjust."
The firearms sanctuary resolutions are continuing to gain momentum throughout rural Illinois, as big city gun control bills hit the General Assembly and Illinois Democrats introduce new measures to ban certain types of semi-automatic guns or gun add-ons like bump stocks, something Campbell said violates Fourth Amendment rights.
"These resolutions are not about bump stocks," he said. "They are about confiscating without compensation items that the people have legally bought and paid for, which is a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution."
Campbell believes better background checks and mental stability checks can provide reasonable gun legislation. He noted, "guns are used 80 times more often to save lives than to take lives - and that's from the CDC's own studies."
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