I’ve had some friends who fostered children through the years, and those folks have my respect. They’re taking on a lot, not just because they’re taking in a child, but they’re often taking in one with significant trauma that they have to deal with. It’s rough, and there aren’t enough foster parents in the US, so every couple who agrees to take one in should be seriously considered.
Obviously, some steps need to be taken to make sure we’re not handing children over to predators or even just generally awful people, but Illinois goes well beyond this.
They won’t let gun owners be foster parents.
Now, owning guns is still legal in Illinois. It’s a constitutionally protected right. It’s something every law-abiding citizen can lawfully do to some degree or another throughout the nation.
And Illinois has decided that such people engaged in the lawful exercise of a civil liberty are unacceptable as foster parents. Of course, they also include homes licensed for day care, too, which is just as stupid.
Unsurprisingly, this has been challenged, and the Second Amendment Foundation has filed a motion for summary judgment in the case.
From a press release.
Attorneys representing the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) have filed a motion for summary judgment in its lawsuit challenging Illinois law that bans firearms in homes licensed to provide foster or day care.
The Foster Home and Day Care Home Rules and statutes in Illinois ban adults licensed to foster parent or provide day care in their own homes from keeping functional firearms for self-defense, even if they are otherwise allowed to possess them.
“Being a caretaker does not come at the expense of your fundamental rights,” said SAF Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack. “The constitutional analysis is no different here than for any other type of gun control. The burden is on the state to prove a historical tradition of similar regulation at the time of the Founding, and that tradition simply does not exist.”
SAF is joined in the case, Miller v. Mueller (formerly Miller v. Smith) by the Illinois State Rifle Association, Illinois Carry and two private citizens, Darin and Jennifer Miller.
“This case was originally filed in 2022 and it’s time for a resolution,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The Bruen Supreme Court ruling shoots down the state’s arguments, but they continue to spend taxpayer dollars fighting a case they know they’ll lose. It’s past time to end this case once and for all.”
Of course, Sack is correct that the burden is on the state to prove a historical tradition from the founding era that serves as an analog for this, but for me, it goes beyond this.
How does it benefit society to take potentially loving homes away from children simply because that household chooses to exercise a constitutionally protected right? What’s next, saying that people who talk about politics can’t foster children or have a day care in their home?
Couple that with the history, text, and tradition standard, and it’s almost inconceivable that this could be considered constitutional.
However, the state of Illinois seems to believe that they have some obligation to waste taxpayer money on such an obviously unjust law. Kind of par for the course for them, if we’re being honest.
Editor’s Note: Gun rights groups across the country, such as the Second Amendment Foundation and many others, are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.
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