Yesterday marked the final day of the spring legislative session in Springfield.
It’s been rather busy of late, and here’s the Reader’s Digest version of the three major legislative battles this spring.
Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence Executive Director Colleen Daley talks policy before a debate with Guns Save Life Executive Director John Boch. Bloomington Pantagraph photo by Lori Cook.
The first big legislative push by the anti-gunners this session, the Lethal Violence Order of Protection, died a quiet death. It didn’t even get a floor vote, especially after NRA-ILA’s guy in Springfield, Todd Vandermyde, pointed out that the proposal would serve as an easy way for domestic abusers to disarm their victims.
That simple statement resonated with a lot of fence sitters and pretty much marked the end of the road for the centerpiece legislation so proudly promoted by Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence Executive Director Colleen Daley and the rest of the gun haters in Illinois.
Next up, the carpetbaggers known as Gabby Giffords, Mark Kelly and Americans for Responsible Solutions have lost badly in their effort to establish gun control through a licensing scheme of Illinois gun dealers. The bill, HB-1016, suffered through seven amendments, but #7 didn’t prove any more lucky than the rest of them for ARS & crew. Each Amendment served as a means to cajole a few more votes.
The bill would have hiked the price of guns significantly (thereby adding another obstacle keeping the poor and inner city law-abiding residents from gun ownership – just as the racist Army-Navy gun laws prevented recently freed slaves from gun ownership after the Civil War) and would have rationed you to nine firearm transactions per year (with a trade counting as two). Had you exceeded nine transactions for a very limited number of reasons allowed by the law, you would have been prohibited from buying another gun for three years. It would have implemented all manner of gun control for no reason other than to drive gun shops out of business and cripple the ability for the average resident to buy a gun.
What’s more, ARS dumped a TON of money, publicity and political capital into what they sold as a sure bet in Illinois. They escalated this bill into a high-profile endeavor and the other groups were pretty much forced into helping promote this flawed gun control scheme as they knew if it failed, they would all share the publicity of a high-profile defeat.
In the end, all of the gun grabber groups shared the smell of defeat with Giffords’ Americans for Responsible Solutions. The best they could muster was a mere 43 votes – nearly twenty shy of passage in the Illinois House and a stinging, humiliating defeat. What’s more, many of the gun control lobbyists flat out lied to legislators, trying to cajole their support by saying they had the votes for passage.
In short, not only did the gun grabbers lose big-time on the second of their legislative priorities this session, but they pissed off a lot of legislators (and legislative staff members) in the process with their lies.
On the pro-gun side of the table, our suppressor bill passed House yesterday by a 69-46 vote.
The fact that our suppressor bill even got a vote roiled the gun control lobbyists and groups, already in town for their last gasp push for the doomed Amendment #7 for the dealer licensing scheme. They went positively apoplectic when our bill passed by a wide margin – unlike their failed bill.
As you can see from the votes for the flawed gun dealer licensing scheme and against the suppressor bill, there are less than fifty die-hard extremists who will vote for gun control and against gun rights that we need to work on. Most of those are Chicagoland Democrats, with the exception of Democrat Carol Ammons from Champaign-Urbana. It’s looking as though Ammons may be intractable in supporting racist gun control, but we’ll keep working on educating her and working to bring her around.
The suppressor bill passed the Senate unanimously earlier this year, and Senate President Cullerton, stung by his gun control legislative defeats, held up a concurrence vote in the Senate before adjourning last night. Cullerton has blocked all measure of pro-gun bills for the past two years, denying them an opportunity to get out of committee. We’ve got the votes to move the ball a lot, but Cullerton in particular has blocked the road for us. Until he feels some heat and sees the light, the only way we’re going to overcome this roadblock is for his removal following an indictment for corruption or health reasons.
We’ll be working behind the scenes to get that final vote in the Senate so the bill can go to Governor Rauner’s desk for approval.
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