Answer:
Article 1, section 22 of the Illinois Constitution reads: “Subject only to the police power, the right of the individual citizen to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”1 Illinois case law provides support for the proposition that most reasonable firearms regulations are valid under art. I § 22.
Step-by-step explanation:
In a 1982 case, Quilici v. Village of Morton Grove, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an article I, § 22 challenge to a local ordinance (No. 81-11) prohibiting the possession of handguns within the Village’s borders.2 The court affirmed the lower court decision upholding the ordinance, finding in relevant part “that the right to keep and bear arms in Illinois is so limited by the police power that a ban on handguns does not violate that right.”3 The court went on to note that:
Section 22 simply prohibits an absolute ban on all firearms….There is no right under the Illinois Constitution to possess a handgun, nor does the state have an overriding state interest in gun control which requires it to retain exclusive control….Once a local government identifies a problem and enacts legislation to mitigate or eliminate it, that enactment is presumed valid and may be overturned only if it is unreasonable, clearly arbitrary, and has no foundation in the police power.