Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

SPRINGFIELD, IL — House Bill 3320, the Responsibility in Firearm Legislation Act, would bar any firearm manufacturer from operating in Illinois without a state license beginning January 1, 2028, and would set the total collected from those licenses at whatever the state calculates as the “public health costs and financial burdens from firearm injuries and deaths.”

The bill, introduced by Rep. Kevin John Olickal, creates the licensing program inside the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. A manufacturer operating in Illinois without that license after January 1, 2028 is subject to a civil penalty of up to $1,000,000 per month. A retailer who sells an Illinois consumer a firearm made by an unlicensed manufacturer is subject to a civil penalty of up to $10,000 per violation. The Department may impose other civil penalties of up to $1,000 per violation, and the Attorney General may enforce the Act.

The fee structure is the part worth reading twice. This is not a charge calibrated to the administrative cost of licensing a regulated business. The bill says the sum of all firearms manufacturer license fees shall be equal to the public health costs and financial burdens from firearm injuries and deaths in Illinois. Whatever number the state assigns to those injuries and deaths becomes the invoice, split among the companies that lawfully manufacture a lawful product.

Proceeds go into a new RIFL Fund in the state treasury. From that fund, the Department would run a financial assistance program for victims of firearms, administered through a contracted program administrator, with rules the Department writes and an exemption from certain state taxes. The Illinois State Police would report certain information to the Department. The bill also makes conforming changes to the State Finance Act and the Illinois Income Tax Act.

The 2026 version goes further than the bill as introduced. House Amendment 3, filed in March, would replace the underlying bill with a broader regulatory structure built around an independent RIFL Agency and a governing board that would license manufacturers and determine how much each company must pay. Under that amendment the agency would calculate fees partly by counting firearms linked to a manufacturer that were recovered in connection with firearm injuries or deaths, according to NSSF. A manufacturer’s bill would rise with crimes committed by people it never sold to, years after the gun left its control.

Neither bill has passed its chamber. HB 3320 was re-referred to the House Rules Committee on March 27 after the substantial amendments were proposed earlier that month, and the Senate companion, SB 2279, was re-referred to the Senate Assignments Committee on May 22, per NSSF. Rules and Assignments are the committees where Illinois bills sit between votes, and sitting there is not the same as being dead. NSSF notes both bills have attracted significant Democrat cosponsorship in their chambers and that Gov. JB Pritzker has voiced support for the effort.

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A manufacturer does not choose who criminally misuses its product, and it does not retain control of a firearm after lawful distribution and retail sale. HB 3320 would make those downstream events part of the price of doing business in Illinois, and a cost that large does not stop at the factory door. It lands on the counter price of the handgun an Illinois resident buys to carry under the state’s concealed carry permit system, on top of the training, the fees, and the wait the state already requires. A law that raises the price of the tool raises the price of the right.

I will continue tracking HB 3320, SB 2279, and House Amendment 3 through the 104th General Assembly.

Legislative data provided by LegiScan (CC BY 4.0, legiscan.com).