Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence Executive Director Colleen Daley talks policy before the debate. Guns Save Life Executive Director John Boch stands at her side. Bloomington Pantagraph photo by Lori Cook.
Yesterday, I attended a debate sponsored by the McLean County Diversity Project, an organization that provides additional learning opportunities to exceptional students in McLean County. The topic was guns, gun control, gun policy and gun violence.
Colleen Daley (no relation to the Mayors) was there representing Illinois’ largest and oldest gun control group, the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence.
The kids asked questions and Colleen and I took turns answering, and offering rebuttals. At times it got exciting. When Colleen said that ICHV had changed its goals and ceased its until now ever-present desire to ban scary guns and enact mag bans, I chimed in.
“C’mon. Let’s be honest Colleen. You gave up on trying to get those because you simply don’t have the votes.”
Colleen too exception to that, saying she changed their focus to Illinois Dealer Licensing (she seems to think the broke State of Illinois will have more money and resources that the Federal government to license gun dealers as they already do). She also wants “strengthened” background checks and for families to petition a court to strip a family member’s Second Amendment rights.
My impression of Colleen was that she put a very warm and fuzzy appearance for these kids, saying that she’s a new leader there and bringing in a new way of doing business.
I’ve been doing this a long time. Maybe she does represent a new, more reasonable attitude towards reducing firearm-related fatalities. She’s going to need more than just words to prove to me that things really have changed at ICHV. I gave her an opportunity to come out in support of suppressors. She said she’s willing to listen, which is more than the previous leaders of ICHV would have said.
She repeatedly didn’t want to say she would support incarcerating violent criminal predators to bring down Illinois’ firearm violent crime as they have done with great effect in Florida.
BLOOMINGTON (Pantagraph) — On the surface, America’s gun question seems simple: do more firearms make the country safer or more dangerous?
Two leading advocates on opposing sides of the gun debate expressed their views of differing, simple solutions to the gun question during a talk in Bloomington Sunday with students of the McLean County Diversity Project.
For John Boch, executive director of Guns Save Life, more guns in the hands of trained citizens is the answer. Colleen Daley, executive director of Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, supports tighter gun control as a way to reduce the number of senseless firearms deaths, including suicides.
“I want more guns, more people with concealed carry permits and more incarceration of people inclined to commit crimes against innocent people,” said Boch, leader of the Champaign-based group.
GSL Executive Director John Boch speaks to the young people. Pantagraph photo by Lori Cook.
The record Black Friday sales of 200,000 guns shows that people are looking for another way to combat attacks by armed criminals, said Boch.
Boch’s group is known for the the short verse road signs along central Illinois highways supporting the virtues of gun ownership. He estimates that 600,000 people a year see the signs. His favorite: “called 911 and put on hold, sure wish I had that gun I sold.”
Daley said her group “is not an anti-gun organization. We’re an anti-killing organization.” Political control does not dictate gun violence, said Daley, whose group supports stiffer laws for tracking guns and illegal gun sales.
We talked towards the end of the debate about the rules relating to Illinois Concealed Carry. Colleen said it’s easier to list the places you can carry, I chuckled and disagreed, mentioning that you could boil it down to taxpayer-supported locations, hospitals and a handful of other venues. I noted that the building we were holding the forum in was posted with non-compliant signage, and that’s why I chose to carry.
That got me a bug-eyed student or two, and the reporter certainly picked up on it.
Boch said he ignored a sign on the former Bloomington High School building where the meeting was held Sunday and brought his weapon inside. He said he made that decision because the sign lacked all the requirements of such a posting.
That paragraph near the end of her story got at least one commenter’s tighty-whiteys in a bind:
Wow. Are other readers troubled by Boch’s disregard for the state’s concealed carry law?
“Boch said he ignored a sign on the former Bloomington High School building where the meeting was held Sunday and brought his weapon inside. He said he made that decision because the sign lacked all the requirements of such a posting.”
I find his unlawful behavior unacceptable. He clearly understood the intent of the law. He said that he ignored it because of a technicality. Does that mean that anyone else should feel entitled to do the same?
Wow. Are other readers troubled by Boch’s disregard for the state’s concealed carry law? …I find his unlawful behavior unacceptable. …he ignored it because of a technicality.
Reading is fundamental. He explained that the sign lacked the requirements promulgated by the Illinois State Police, and therefore, under the law, was invalid.
Technicality? Since when are “technicalities” to be ignored? If the seemingly anti-gun owners of the building can’t even bother to comply with the law, why should the law-abiding folks comply with their wishes?
Suck it up, ihatepasswords. You’ll be okay. Nobody got killed at that debate, just like nobody got hurt when that CCWer was sitting at the next table the last time you ate at a restaurant.
Comments are closed.