Lake County in Illinois isn’t quite Chicago. Its seat is Waukegan, which isn’t nearly as large and not nearly as violent as the Windy City is. Still, it’s Illinois, it’s urban enough to follow similar politics to its big sister city, and so it’s no surprise that many there like guns.
And it’s unsurprising that, like most of the country, the county is seeing a drop in violence. This is a good thing, and no one should pretend otherwise.
What’s a problem, though, is that lawmakers there, like in so many other places, are drawing the wrong conclusions about what’s causing the drop.
June marked four years since the Lake County State’s Attorney’s Office announced the formation of its Gun Violence Prevention Initiative (GVPI), and officials are pointing to subsequent drops in shootings, homicides and emergency department visits as proof of its value.
The GVPI is a program led by Director Tierra Lemon. It was launched shortly before a mass shooting that sparked calls locally and nationwide for improved gun control: the 2022 Highland Park July 4 parade shooting.
State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart, reflecting on the shooting that shocked the region, pledged the program would continue working with state and local law enforcement agencies to inform police, mental health providers and schools of the different tools they can use to identify those who may be a threat to the community.
That can mean temporarily restricting someone’s access to firearms through a “firearm restraining order.” These court orders are one of the puzzle pieces of GVPI’s overall efforts to reduce gun violence.
During a June County Board meeting, roughly $1.4 million in funds from the federal Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program were either renewed or approved for efforts related to firearm restraining orders.
Approximately $900,000 in renewed funds, running from May 1, 2026, to April 30, 2027, will go to awareness and education efforts, including pay for two existing full-time positions, a restraining order trainer, and a social worker.
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Rinehart, who has championed the initiative, called it a “laboratory of ideas” that has proven its worth. He said Illinois State Police data shows that Lake County leads Illinois in the issuance of these restraining orders.
In an annual report to the county Law and Judicial Committee, he pointed to various statistics showing improved gun violence numbers between 2022 and 2025.
The attempt at a link seems clear. Red flag laws, in their mind, reduce so-called gun violence, and so they need more money to get more red flag laws.
Let’s understand something, though. There are red flag laws on the books in 22 states. That means 28 have no such laws on the books. If red flag laws were responsible for the drop in violence involving a firearm, then why are the numbers dropping everywhere? It’s not just red flag states seeing it, but even the most pro-gun places have also experienced a similar decline in things like murders.
How is that possible?
Maybe because red flag laws aren’t the reason for the drop, and the insistence on more funding for more red flag orders is nothing but a grab for money by a state entity that exists solely to keep itself going.
No one in Illinois seems to want to even consider the possibility that the Bruen decision played a factor because now, all of a sudden, anyone who wasn’t expressly prohibited from having a carry permit could get one, which meant too many of the bad guys’ potential targets might well shoot them in the face rather than hand over the money or even just die like good little victims.
The sheep had teeth all of a sudden, and the wolves crawled back into the forests.
But nah, I guess they couldn’t acknowledge that fact because, if they did, people might realize there’s no reason for their jobs to exist in the first place.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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