Posted: 4/14/2013 5:53:00 AM EDT
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Todd V. Update - 4/14/2013
Update from Todd V., via Illinois Carry, 4/14/2013 http://illinoiscarry.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=36675 Posted Today, 12:19 AM Update. "This 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 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 a very simply 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. That has 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 and 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” or you can use your imagination. 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. 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 BANNED CARRY BILL. Updates will come in as we can explain the situation. Understand that they don’t always contain a lot of info. They might simply have a call to action. Sometimes you’re gonna have to take it on faith that there is a problem and just follow the directions. Example: Earlier this week, I had to put out a spot report to continue to call and state that the NRA and gun owners were still opposed 2265. The City was lying to downstate dems about our concerns with the bill and what our position was. It didn’t give me a lot of time to layout the details as I had to get to the downstate dems and let them know that we were not OK with the bill. We didn’t have time to name names and get into the whole who said what. It was simply important to get to those legislators and tell them we were opposed. I’m drained from this week. I have to try and get a couple of positional papers out. Analyze a couple of amendments, try and fix the Mayor’s boondoggle, and work on a couple of other bills/amendments for Monday. 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. The anti-gunners lobby day was pathetic a couple of hundred people showed up compared to the 8000 gun owners who marched down the street. 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. It's after midnight I'm calling it a day. Todd" |
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Thanks for everything!
And to the antis.... Tick tock, tick tock |