Evergreen Park's Assault Weapon Ban Shot Down

An ordinance that would have banned assault weapons in Evergreen Park died on the table after local gun supporters argued impassionedly against it during Monday's village board meeting.

Evergreen Park was one of 20, Chicago-area municipal boards scheduled to vote on some variation of an assault weapons ban this week, following the passage of Illinois's conceal-carry law on July 9.

In addition to passing a law allowing citizens to carry concealed handguns, the state legislature gave suburban municipalities ten days to ban assault weapons in their respective communities.

 “I think you should be able to conceal and carry,” Mayor James Sexton said. “The problem in this state is we have no one acting in conjunction to get proper legislation passed.”

Evergreen Park gun owners and others from nearby communities said the ordinance would ban guns used for competitive shooting and hunting.

“I’m involved in a lot of competitions,” resident Larry Merchantz said. “I haven’t seen any need to have a ban like this in Evergreen Park. We’re not like Chicago. We don’t have shootings in the streets. It would affect a lot of law abiding citizens.”

Sexton said that the village's only intent was to be proactive and prevent someone from walking into a local mall or school with assault weapons outfitted with large magazines of ammunition.

"If the state and federal government would act we wouldn't be talking about this," the mayor said, "but the state has not acted like they haven't acted on a whole bunch of things lately and this is the result of that. Should we be in the legislation of banning guns? Hell, no."

"Under the ordinance the weapon itself isn't banned, only when it has a magazine in automatic mode," Cainkar said.

The gun owners argued that Evergreen Park’s ban mistakenly lumped together semi-automatic rifles such as the AR-15 rifle, which is only capable of firing one round per shot, with fully automatic assault weapons that can fire multiple rounds on a single trigger squeeze.

Another resident, Chris Reynosa, called the village’s proposed assault weapon ban “a feel-good law that would do nothing to affect criminals and the mentally deranged.” 

“Its only effect would be to make criminals out of law abiding citizens and limit the freedoms I possess as a citizen of the United States of America,” Reynosa said.

The gun advocates said they probably knew more about the type of weaponry and the state’s piecemeal gun legislation than village board members.

Helen Cuprisin was the only audience member to speak in favor of the ban.

“Who’s running this country? The NRA?” she asked. “Every tiny, little thing about a gun they’re up in arms … What kind of a country is this with everyone packing a gun. Is that going to make any of you safer?” 

Before the mayor took the vote, John Young urged village board members not to fall for “liberal crap.” 

“All these commies and lefties in these [towns] up north are doing is gun confiscation,” Young said. “"We're normal people that want to take our competition rifles away. I think we’re better than that. I’m a Vietnam veteran. I want the AR-15 in case Charlie comes back.”

After the meeting, attorney Cainkar said it was unlikely that the issue would be taken up again with only five days left until the state's July 19 deadline given to municipalities to enact their own assault weapon bans.  The village board is not scheduled to meet again until next month.

The mayor thanked audience members for their input and for being heard.

“Thank you for hearing us,” a man said, speaking on behalf of the gun owners.

“God bless, America,” another shouted.