Ray Flavin's Legal Blog

If you are from a state other than Illinois, you probably haven't asked this question, but if you come from Illinois ... you probably have.

Today's Lesson:  Don't let the state decided who gets to have guns.

Some of you might want the state to keep guns out of the hands of criminals.  Those of you who think that we must believe that the state is capable of making good decisions.  You are wrong.

If a person gets sentenced to conditional discharge (convicted with conditions) in Illinois the State Police will ask the person to turn over their FOID (firearm owner's identification card).  This sounds reasonable until the State Police apply this to people who drive while license suspended, or commit the offense of reckless driving and receive conditional discharge.  Why would someone's bad driving be a reason for the state to take a person's right to bear arms.

Answer:  from the State of Illinois "Because we can."

So the next government that we form, we should be careful to write down what rights the people have that the government can't infringe on .... whoops, we already did that.  Oh well.

Ray Flavin

Posted by lawblog at 04:02 PM | Permalink

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Well we are about to start a new year and I can hardly wait to see how the state legislature is going to screw up DUI law in their never ending mission to "be tough on DUI."  I guess the reason that I am so tough on them is that over the 15 short years that I have been representing those charged with DUI, the number of arrests for DUI has risen each year. 

Every year, another "tough" law; every year the number of DUIs in our county rises.  Why doesn't the law have any effect?  Well, its really easy to explain, and for Christmas I will give the state legislature a present and tell them why "tougher" laws don't work.

Why do people get DUIs?  It is because they make a bad decision to drive at the end of the night.  Why do they make these bad decisions?  Because "Alcohol impairs judgment."  No matter how tough you make the law, the person reacting to the law change (by definition) will have decreased ability to make good judgments to comply with the silly "tougher" law.  I like to explain it like this to my kids.  No matter how many times I yell at the dog to play the piano, or how loud; the dog just ain't gonna play the piano.

If you want to solve the DUI problem you will have to find a way to make that bad decision to drive harder to accomplish if a person has had too much to drink before he drives.

Merry Christmas everyone, drive safe

Ray Flavin

Posted by lawblog at 05:32 PM | Permalink

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