In Illinois, if you want to have guns and/or ammunition, you need to have something called a Firearm Owners Identification Card, or FOID. If you don't, you run the risk of spending a lot of time in prison.
Or you're the typical gang-banger in Chicago. Of course, the failure of the law is just one example of how stupid it is. It's when it "works" that's another.
I mean, there are times when there are bad actors who need to be dealt with. No one is saying there aren't. I mean, look at Iran right now. FAFO and all that.
But the response should reflect the offense, don't you think?
In gun-controlled Illinois, though, that's not how it works, apparently. They're more partial to overkill:
The SWAT response and shelter-in-place order in Lake in the Hills Thursday morning was due to a search warrant on a 20-year-old man allegedly possessing 38 rounds of pistol and rifle ammunition without a FOID card.
Joel Fernandez, 20, was arrested without incident at his residence in the 1400 block of Clayton Marsh Drive in Lake in the Hills and was charged with four counts of possessing ammunition without a valid Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) card, a Class A misdemeanor.
At around 9:50 a.m. Thursday, the Lake in the Hills Police Department – assisted by the Carpentersville Police Department and the McHenry County Sheriff’s multijurisdictional SWAT team – executed a search warrant at Fernandez’s residence.
“The search warrant was part of a joint investigation into illegal activity,” the Lake in the Hills Police Department said in a news release.
A criminal complaint filed in McHenry County Circuit Court alleges that Fernandez knowingly possessed – without a valid FOID card – 20 cartridges of .45 Auto Sellier & Bellot branded full metal jacket (FMJ), 13 cartridges of .223 Remington branded steel core FMJ, one cartridge of 9mm Blazer Brass branded FMJ, one cartridge of 9mm Remington-Peters branded FMJ, one cartridge of 9mm Speer branded jacketed hollow point (JHP), and two cartridges of 9mm Sig Sauer branded JHP.
This means that Fernandez was allegedly possessing 25 cartridges of pistol ammunition and 13 cartridges of rifle ammunition, totaling 38.
The complaint did not mention whether Fernandez possessed firearms.
So, it doesn't look like they found any guns because you know they'd be included if they had, but instead launched a SWAT raid over half a box of handgun ammo and two-thirds of a box of rifle ammo.
Look, if they want to enforce the law, that's one thing, but the amount of ammunition suspected to be in the house was so low they had to know this wasn't some domestic terrorist or gang-banger sitting on his gang's arsenal. They probably could have just brought a couple of cops, served the warrant, and then made the arrest.
A misdemeanor arrest, mind you.
That's right, they sent a SWAT team on a warrant for a charge that's in the same category as DUI and shoplifting under $300 worth of merchandise.
Even if he'd had the guns he was suspected of having, it's still minor charges, all things considered.
Meanwhile, how many gang-bangers are being visited by SWAT teams for their own gun possession without an FOID, among a plethora of other potential charges that could be applied?
Leave it to anti-gun states to lose their minds over anything with a gun, all while violent offenders keep getting out of prison because it's a day that ends in "y," and the judge doesn't think prison works anyway.
