If you have a home-based business, do you automatically give up your rights? Most people would think, “No, of course not.” They’d be right. Just because you have an open door for your home business, doesn’t mean the government the right to come in and search your house, after all.

But in Illinois, if you have a home-based daycare, you apparently can’t have a gun. Now, a couple has filed a lawsuit to challenge that ban.

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services has been named in a federal lawsuit filed this week challenging the agency’s firearms policy for home day cares.

Jennifer and Darin Miller have three children in their Shelbyville home as well as current Illinois firearms cards and concealed carry licenses. However, although Jennifer was licensed by IDCFS last year to run a daycare in her home, the agency has guidelines against possessing loaded handguns in their home while operating the daycare. This, argues the Millers and a trio of gun rights organizations supporting their suit, tramples their right to keep and bear arms.

“IDCFS substantially prohibits day care home licensees, and those who would be day care home licensees, from the possession of firearms for the purpose of self-defense, which violates their constitutional rights under the Second Amendment,” said Alan Gottlieb with the Second Amendment Foundation concerning the legal challenge filed Monday. The Illinois State Rifle Association and Illinois Carry are also signed on to the lawsuit in support of the Millers.

Now, I understand the concern. If you have a bunch of rugrats running around a home, no one wants one of them to find a gun and find tragedy soon after. I get that. Let’s be honest; it’s a legitimate concern.

However, the problem isn’t that regulations are stating the Millers would need to keep firearms locked up or anything. These are regulations saying they can’t have them in the house at all. That takes things too far.

Illinois isn’t a firearm friendly state as it stands, so I can’t say it’s overly surprising they’d take a stand like this, but I can say that I’m glad to see the lawsuit. Regulations like this desperately need to change. People don’t forfeit their right to keep and bear arms because of a vocation, especially an entrepreneurial one. While it’s one thing to require steps be taken to keep the kids safe, the rule actually makes the Millers less safe.

Anyone who knows these rules knows that the Millers are sitting at home, disarmed. They’re a prime target for whatever mayhem some thug wants to inflict on them. The same goes for countless other in-home daycares in the state.

Look, it’s one thing to disarm someone. It’s another thing to make it so everyone knows they’re disarmed. One is a violation of someone’s civil liberties. The other is a violation and an invitation to criminals.

What do you want to bet that at least some of the pencil-necks who thought up this nonsense have a handgun sitting in their nightstand drawer?