The Volokh Conspiracy - "Assault Weapon" / .50-Caliber Rifle Ban by Zip Code:

I just read an interesting amendment to an Illinois House Bill proposed by Illinois Rep. André M. Thapedi. A few thoughts:

1. The law that it proposes would be titled "the Automatic Weapons Safe Zone Act of 2009." But many provisions of the law expressly target semiautomatics, and those that don't specifically mention that in fact will only practically apply to semiautomatics, since fully automatic weapons are already banned for civilians by Illinois law.

2. The law, as now usual, defines "assault weapons" by focusing partly on whether they have folding stocks, pistol grips, barrel shrouds, and other factors that are of no relevance to the gun's dangerousness or criminal utility. Even if criminals comply with it, they can be just as dangerous by simply switching to other, unbanned weapons. (The .50-caliber rifle is potentially more dangerous, but it is of course not commonly used in crime, in Illinois or elsewhere.

3. Most remarkably, though, the law applies to "the following zip codes: 60637, 60636, 60629, 60621, 60620, and 60619."

These are, as I understand it, overwhelmingly black (except 60629), which leads Dave Workman (Seattle Gun Rights Examiner) to condemn the bill as "racist." I don't think that's right. I have no reason to think that the representative is hostile to any particular race, and even if one focuses just on the impact of the law (something that I think shouldn't be done under the label "racist"), both the restrictive and the supposedly protective effects of the law will mostly affect blacks. At the same time, this sort of criminal-law-by-zip-code strikes me as unusual and unlikely to be either effective or fair.

Thanks to Dave Workman and Prof. Ray Kessler for the pointer.

UPDATE: Removed a clause asserting that fully automatic weapons are already largely banned by federal law. As the comments point out, the federal statute's cap on the availability of fully automatics (an artifact of the ban on new automatics with the grandfathering in of the old ones) is better characterized as heavy regulation that makes lawfully owned fully automatics very expensive. But in any event this is something of a tangent, since Illinois law does completely ban civilian possession of fully automatic weapons in Illinois.

	[Eugene Volokh, March 26, 2009 at 2:40pm] Trackbacks "Assault Weapon" / .50-Caliber Rifle Ban by Zip Code: I just read an interesting amendment to an Illinois House Bill proposed by Illinois Rep. André M. Thapedi. A few thoughts: 1. The law that it proposes would be titled "the Automatic Weapons Safe Zone Act of 2009." But many provisions of the law expressly target semiautomatics, and those that don't specifically mention that in fact will only practically apply to semiautomatics, since fully automatic weapons are already banned for civilians by Illinois law. 2. The law, as now usual, defines "assault weapons" by focusing partly on whether they have folding stocks, pistol grips, barrel shrouds, and other factors that are of no relevance to the gun's dangerousness or criminal utility. Even if criminals comply with it, they can be just as dangerous by simply switching to other, unbanned weapons. (The .50-caliber rifle is potentially more dangerous, but it is of course not commonly used in crime, in Illinois or elsewhere. 3. Most remarkably, though, the law applies to "the following zip codes: 60637, 60636, 60629, 60621, 60620, and 60619." These are, as I understand it, overwhelmingly black (except 60629), which leads Dave Workman (Seattle Gun Rights Examiner) to condemn the bill as "racist." I don't think that's right. I have no reason to think that the representative is hostile to any particular race, and even if one focuses just on the impact of the law (something that I think shouldn't be done under the label "racist"), both the restrictive and the supposedly protective effects of the law will mostly affect blacks. At the same time, this sort of criminal-law-by-zip-code strikes me as unusual and unlikely to be either effective or fair. Thanks to Dave Workman and Prof. Ray Kessler for the pointer. UPDATE: Removed a clause asserting that fully automatic weapons are already largely banned by federal law. As the comments point out, the federal statute's cap on the availability of fully automatics (an artifact of the ban on new automatics with the grandfathering in of the old ones) is better characterized as heavy regulation that makes lawfully owned fully automatics very expensive. But in any event this is something of a tangent, since Illinois law does completely ban civilian possession of fully automatic weapons in Illinois.