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Geneva to vote on air gun law next week

In an earlier version, it was incorrectly stated who posted information about Geneva's proposed air gun law on the Facebook page of the Illinois State Rifle Association. Geneva resident Kurt Koenig only called the association. The association posted the information and that Koenig was monitoring the proposal.

Should Geneva prohibit people from shooting paintballs? Should the city council bother with regulating the use of paintball and other air guns at all?

The council plans to vote on the matter next Monday, after it learns a little more about projectile caliber and velocity, and clears up whether renters would be allowed to fire guns on a property, or just the owners.

The proposed Geneva law would regulate several types of air-powered guns, including BB guns, Airsoft-style guns and paintguns.

It would allow people to fire projectiles of .17 of an inch or smaller, as long as the projectiles don't strike anything off that person's property. They would have to use some unspecified means to prevent that from happening.

But Alderman Mary Seno, whose children shoot paintguns, said most paintgun ammunition is larger than .17 of an inch. She was one of the aldermen who spoke against banning air guns, when Police Chief Steve Mexin initially proposed the idea in July. Mexin was not at Monday's committee of the whole meeting. It came up as the police were reviewing Geneva's laws regarding weapons, in wake of the state allowing concealed carrying of guns.

"So how are they going to do a paintball gun?" she said. Paintballs are commonly .68 of an inch in caliber, Alderman Don Cummings said.

Cummings suggested differentiating in the proposed law between paintball ammunition and other projectiles.

Geneva resident Kurt Koenig suggested the council abandon the idea of regulating air guns at all. He said it was suggested first by Mexin as a safety measure because many of the guns look like real guns, and officers will treat them as such if they see them, even if they have fluorescent-orange tips on the barrel. Koenig said that could be rectified by merely requiring people to paint or tape fluorescent-orange markings several inches up on the barrels. But Deputy Cmdr. Julie Nash said that still wouldn't prevent officers from assuming the guns are real, because criminals could also mark real guns that way.

Mike Weisman, a Glen Ellyn resident who is on the board of directors of the Illinois State Rifle Association, also spoke against the ordinance. He noted the several times the proposal has been rewritten since it was first introduced, and suggested that it was a vanity project of the police chief, to improve a "performance evaluation." Mayor Kevin Burns then ruled that Weisman was out of order for criticizing the police chief and told him to stick to discussing the facts of the proposal.

Weisman said he saw "a lot of holes" in the ordinance, and said it wasn't necessary, because air guns are already covered by state law.

Burns also criticized Koenig for being affiliated with the ISRA, but Koenig said he is not a member of the group and had merely called the group to notify it of the proposed ordinance. The association then posted that information on its Facebook page, and that Koenig was monitoring the ordinance. The ISRA also sent out a legislative alert criticizing the proposal and urging people to attend the meeting.

But there was no crowd; only Koenig and Weisman spoke about the proposal.

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