By Todd Vandermyde
Illinois –-(Ammoland.com)- Last week we spent a lot of time working on killing off HB-2265.
A bill that would set up a mandatory 3 year minimum sentence for an AG-UUW.
What might seem like an unconventional pairing, Governor Quinn’s office has been engaged in helping kill this proposal by Mayor Emanuel due to its nearly $1 BILLION cost to the state.
Mayor Emanuel has taken to calling legislators personally to try and sway them, while city lobbyists have taken to portraying anyone opposing the measure as soft on crime.
This is very simply a 2013 version of the Safe Neighborhoods fight of 2000 only it’s on steroids. We have a mayor who acts like a petulant child demanding he get things his way and stamping his feet.
In putting the votes together it was a simple math equation that said hanging on to a majority of republicans, along with downstate democrats, and adding in the black caucus made it nearly impossible for the City to find the 60 votes to pass the bill. While we have tried to tell them how to fix it, they have refused.
We start with the fact that the state has taken little to no action on passing a carry law to address the Court’s ruling in Moore/Shepard. They have done nothing to address the unconstitutional finds of the Court on the basic UUW and AG-UUW statute. Not to mention the ruling by a Cook County Judge in Mosely where not only did he find that the statute was unconstitutional it also violated the disproportionate penalties rule.
After tying them in a knot all week, they decided to go over to the senate and try to add their language as a floor amendment to SB-1003 late Friday. Same stuff, different chamber.
All the while the City continues to demand that they get to set their own rules for carry in the city and that the carry law contain no preemption language. My response – “Yea Right”. Add to this that the Senate continues to hold secret talks about a carry bill and the House seems to have put on hold any more floor debates.
Add to the mix talks of drafting a bill dealing with mental health issues and FOID reporting and Sheriff Dart’s idea about picking up revoked FOID cards and firearms reporting. Next week we will have another run at things and we’ll see where it all is going.
Call your state senators starting Monday and tell them to oppose Mayor Emanuel’s proposal for SB1003.
Call your state representative and tell them to continue to oppose Mayor Emanuel’s Billion dollar boondoggle, until concerns about out of state gun owners, and the carry issues have been addressed.
Continue to call your reps and senators and tell them
NO BAD CARRY BILL.
(Carry legislation must include shall-issue, statewide preemption, carry on public transportation, and commercially available training.)
Session is far from over with about 6 weeks left. We should take heart that we have made it this far without any significant anti-gun proposals being passed.
As I said, more will come, and we will have to defeat it as well as work on passing a carry law. I fully believe that we will have to kill a bad carry bill to prove we can and are serious about what we want and fought to get.
About:
The IllinoisCarry forum was started in April 2004. The idea was that Illinois needed a central location to communicate ideas and information regarding 2nd Amendment issues in Illinois. There are many organizations in Illinois working to protect our 2nd Amendment Rights. Working with these groups IllinoisCarry has become the central location for information and Action Alerts. IllinoisCarry will not endorse political candidates. We simply provide information so voters can make informed decisions. Our goal is to join the other 48 states that allow their citizens to carry concealed firearms. We encourage you to register on our forum and join the fight for your 2nd Amendment Rights in Illinois. Visit www.IllinoisCarry.com