Nobody needs to tell the people of Highland Park that AR-15-type assault-style rifles, in the wrong hands, are a threat to civil society.
Highland Park residents have attended the funerals of seven people who were killed by a rooftop shooter at last year’s Independence Day parade. Some have paid hospital visits to the wounded. Others have followed the progress of the children injured or the boy who was orphaned.
Many joined the respectful march down Central Avenue on July 4 this week. And they did so knowing that Illinois’ effort to ban the sale of assault-style rifles and large ammunition magazines — passed in the aftermath of the shooting — is caught in legal limbo.
Multiple lawsuits are challenging the constitutional standing of the law, but the U.S. Supreme Court is allowing the law to remain in effect while the challenges work their way through the lower state and federal courts. With the assault weapon restrictions caught up in the courts, second-order responses to the scourge of gun violence in Illinois have taken on added importance.
“Red flag” laws, designed to alert authorities and prevent people who pose a danger to themselves or others from obtaining guns, have become a key line of defense. And their application by authorities is an important signal of whether gun control measures will be able to help protect communities from gun violence.
A Tribune study found that one red flag tool, so-called clear and present danger reports, have doubled since last July 4. More than 11,800 reports were made to the Illinois State Police, which can deny firearm owner’s identification cards to people deemed to be hazards to public safety.
The Tribune also found that use of firearms restraining orders — issued by judges to take away guns from people found to pose a threat — have reached new highs. In fact, the rate of issuance has roughly tripled, from an average of around five per month over three-plus years before the Highland Park attack to roughly 15 a month statewide since August.
The red flag laws are crucial because there is no telling whether Illinois’ virtual ban on AR-15-style weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines will hold up against the inevitable U.S. Supreme Court review. State Attorney General Kwame Raoul has said he’s confident the law is constitutional, but the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has consistently ruled in favor of Second Amendment gun rights.
With the future of Illinois’ assault weapons ban so uncertain, the state’s red flag laws represent a slender but reliable defense for a public alarmed by easy access to high-powered military-style weapons and the dangers they pose to safety.
And because red flag tools are so essential to keeping people safe, a lack of transparency about implementation of the law is entirely unacceptable.
Specifically, we know the issuance of restraining orders has tripled, yet we have no idea how many requests to the courts were denied. That’s in large measure because the Freedom of Information Act does not explicitly include the state’s courts, and Illinois courts in turn have exempted themselves from any obligation to respond to records requests.
FOIA laws require public entities — from the most powerful officials to the least prominent bureau of government — to hand over records, promptly and completely, when members of the public request them. They’re called public records for a reason: They’re our property, not the government’s.
But because the courts currently are exempt, the public has no way of knowing how many restraining order requests are made and how many are denied. This leaves us with little information with which to measure the role courts are playing in applying this key tool to reduce gun violence in Illinois.
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It’s not just reporters and the public that don’t have this vital information. The Tribune reported that the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, a state agency focused on research and analysis; the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts; and even the Illinois State Police have no data on how many restraining order requests are filed. They are informed only when judges issue restraining orders.
The lack of disclosure about the court system’s handling of restraining orders is just one example of information that Illinois’ courts keep out of public view. The state’s juvenile detention system — where thousands of young people are housed under sometimes deplorable conditions — is part of the judicial branch of state government and therefore exempt from FOIA requests too.
The Better Government Association’s policy team, which operates separately from our Illinois Answers Project newsroom, this spring supported a bill introduced by state Rep. Curtis J. Tarver II, D-Chicago, to make courts in Illinois subject to FOIA. BGA Policy is part of a Court Transparency Coalition that includes the Civic Federation, the League of Women Voters and other good government organizations.
Tarver’s bill did not come up for a vote this spring. But court transparency is needed, and the coalition pushing for it will continue seeking support.
The court system in the U.S. is a bulwark of democracy. In Illinois — where the effort to protect against assault with military-style weapons is still under appeal — how the courts handle the enforcement of red flag laws literally can be a matter of life and death.
How effectively are the courts handling this responsibility? The people of the state — along with the agencies that analyze, administer and enforce the law — have a need to know. But with the state’s courts standing in the way, it will take action from the state legislature to cast a light on the role the courts are playing with red flag laws and other vitally important aspects of government in Illinois.
David Greising is president and CEO of the Better Government Association.
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