“Michael Madigan sentenced to 7.5 years in prison for corruption convictions,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported Friday. “[T]he country’s longest-serving state House leader, [he] served as speaker of the Illinois House from 1983 until 2021, with the exception of two years. Along the way, he developed a reputation as an all-powerful political wizard who wielded vast influence over laws affecting nearly every aspect of life in the state.”
So, another corrupt Democrat Chicago politician is guilty of bribery. Talk about a “dog bites man” story. Do we even need to ask where he stood on guns?
Back in 2013, after “the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals … decreed the state’s last-in-the-nation ban unconstitutional” giving Democrats no choice but to approve some form of concealed carry, Madigan finagled the implementation “making more locations off limits to firearms, including public transportation — a priority for many Chicagoans wary of a slew of firearms on mass-transit buses and trains. Festivals and special events — a mainstay of summertime Chicago — would restrict guns, along with parks and playgrounds, hospitals, zoos and museums.”
He’d also led the effort to “require the state to license gun shops … allow judges to strip someone of their weapons if they pose an immediate threat, and [prevent] people under 21 from purchasing military-style assault rifles,” and years earlier had supported then-Mayor Richard M. Daley’s “so-called Safe Neighborhoods Act”(later declared unconstitutional because dealing with more than one subject violated the state constitution), which “made unlawful possession of a firearm a felony.” Think of the many ways peaceable gunowners could be entrapped by that, from having a banned firearm to transporting one where they’re not allowed, like Chicago at the time (See “Chi-Town’s Pell-Mell Gun Laws,” Guns Magazine, November, 2008, for the way another corrupt Democrat engineered an exemption for himself when trapped in an infringement he’d helped craft.)
Unsurprisingly and in character, Madigan resorted to legislative chicanery to usher in a ban on “semi-automatic assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines.”
He wasn’t done, if you consider using his powerful party connections to inflict his adopted daughter, “nepo tyrant” Lisa, on gun owners, who as state attorney general ordered the “outing” of Firearm Owner Identification Card (FOID) holders.
There have been so many reports of CRIMINAL ANTI-GUN DEMOCRATS who have ended up “hoist with their own petard” and declared prohibited persons themselves, with examples like Bob Menendez, Leland Yee, Chicago’s own Ed Burke, or any number of Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against (Your) Guns, that it’s fair to assume none of these people are atypical.
They would make for an interesting case study in projection, to determine why so many zealots who can’t (or more likely won’t) control themselves are so monomaniacally obsessed with controlling the rest of us.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
Another good example for term limits for every politician.
“[T]he country’s longest-serving state House leader, [he] served as speaker of the Illinois House from 1983 until 2021, with the exception of two years. Along the way, he developed a reputation as an all-powerful political wizard who wielded vast influence over laws affecting nearly every aspect of life in the state.”
Sometimes l wonder if these misguided liberal politicians vote they way they do is because they themselves lack any self control and think the rest of us are the same way?