By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD – The wait is over – for now, anyway – for Illinois police and prosecutors to now have rules by which the state’s new assault weapons registry is supposed to work. The legislature’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules objected to the state police’s proposed rules, which go into effect anyway.

Many – in fact, most – Illinois sheriffs have said they will not enforce the law.

“There’s some subtlety in that,” said State Sen. Bill Cunningham (D-Chicago), JCAR’s co-chairman, “of exactly how you enforce the law: whether you are affirmatively going out and enforcing the law, or enforcing it when you come across someone to be in violation.

“I don’t know that, in the latter example, so many sheriffs are going to refuse to enforce the law, but I think they should. I think anybody who believes in law and order should enforce the law of the land.”

“It could be up to ninety sheriffs that said they are not going to enforce it,” said Ed Sullivan, a lobbyist for the Illinois State Rifle Association. “The problem that law-abiding gun owners need to understand is: any judge from any county, given probable cause, can file a charge against you. It doesn’t have to be your state’s attorney and your sheriff. It could be state police going to a friendly judge in Cook County.”

Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected]