Dr. Anthony Douglas is coming to the Oak Park Public Library Veterans Room at 7 p.m. next Tuesday, Jan. 13, to speak about the Illinois RIFL Act (Responsibility in Firearm Legislation) also known as HB3320/SB2279. This bill will be before the Illinois Legislature this session, and, if adopted into law, will require firearm manufacturers to share the financial consequences of gun violence with taxpayers and the state of Illinois.
This would result in a “significant realignment of firearm manufacturers’ financial interest toward gun violence prevention and reducing the harm their products cause. Manufacturers would pay into a state treasury fund based on how frequently their products are recovered in an injury or death. The funds will be allocated to evidence-based violence prevention strategies like community violence intervention and gun violence victim services.”
Douglas is a doctor at the University of Chicago Medicine Trauma Center on the City’s South Side. He knows firsthand the toll that gun violence takes on its victims. He also has observed, on an all-too-frequent basis, the present inequities of a system that causes everyone — except the gun manufacturers — to shoulder the burden for all of these soaring gun violence victim costs, while the manufacturers, who produce and sell the guns that enable the gun violence in the first place, walk away bearing no responsibility for the carnage they have enabled.
Douglas is the architect of the policy experiment that has evolved into the Responsibility in Firearm Legislation Act.
RIFL is already backed by a growing coalition of Illinois state lawmakers and advocates. It is sponsored by state Sen. Robert Peters in the Senate, and state Rep. Kevin Olickal in the House. Rep. Olickal has stated, “We are optimistic about the coalition we’re building, and we’re hopeful that we can get something done in [2026].”
Please come on Jan. 13 to hear Dr. Douglas speak on this bill. I think you will find it worthwhile. Some of us are focused on preserving our democracy and rightly so, but I would urge that we cannot afford to set aside, and put on hold, all the other important causes we have been advocating while we fight the fight for our Democracy. We must continue to shine a bright light on all of them and keep them moving forward even as we fight to preserve democracy. It is our continued engagement on all these issues that serves as a necessary underpinning for our democracy, making it work.
Democracy demands citizen participation, and that means, as difficult as it can be at times, we have to stay well-informed and well-educated. We have to keep our heads in the game.
The presentation by Douglas will last less than a half-hour with time afterward to ask any questions you may have. There is no admission charge and registration will not be required. It is my understanding that, following Douglas’ talk, two local organizations will make short presentations explaining the work they are doing in community violence intervention and in gun violence victim support.
The impact that passage of the RIFL Act would have on gun manufacturers in Illinois could have national implications.
Ray Heise is the retired Oak Park village attorney. He is a member of the Oak Park-based gun-violence prevention group, Gun Responsibility Advocates.
