“Be Careful”

A few days ago, the Illinois senate overturned Gov. Quinn’s amendatory veto of a concealed carry law.

Okay; let me explain.  On December 11 of last year, the US 7th Circuit Court of Appeals declared Illinois’s ban on carrying a concealed weapon unconstitutional.     They gave the Illinois legislature a little time to change the law.

In other words, although I’m sure he wanted to veto that whole bad boy altogether, Gov. Quinn couldn’t because the court ruled banning carrying concealed weapons is unconstitutional.  He had pushed for measures such as an assault weapons ban to be added to the bill; they failed.

Instead, Quinn employed an amendatory veto.   The veto would have prohibited concealed weapons from being brought into any establishment that serves alcohol.  It would have required the law to assume that the owner of an establishment disallowed concealed weapons unless they explicitly gave written permission, under the new law the opposite is true.   It would have  protected our police officers so that when an officer asks if a person has a concealed weapon, the person must promptly answer.   It would have capped the number of weapons people are permitted to carry at any one time at one.  It would have more narrowly defined “concealed” to exclude  what are basically half-concealed weapons.  It would have covered the meetings and records of the Concealed Carry Licensing Review Board under the Open Meetings and Freedom of Information Acts.  Most importantly, it would have allowed employers to impose limits on employees carrying concealed weapons; and allowed for local governments to enact assault weapons bans.

None of this was included in the original bill and all of it was overturned when the legislature overturned the veto.

You’ve heard me.  It is now illegal for Chicago, Cook County, and any other local or county government in the state of Illinois to ban assault weapons.

Gun control opponents argue that because of Chicago’s high murder rate, the state’s tough gun control laws should be overturned completely.  That argument fails to take into account the high rate of gun trafficking into the city, all of which is legal, from Indiana and the suburbs.   Less gun control is not the answer; federal gun control is.  If concealed carry laws did anything to reduce the murder rate in Chicago, I would be shocked.

On a more random note, voting records for this issue can be found here for the House and here for the Senate.

And I’ll leave you with the words of comedian Stephen Colbert after the court originally declared a concealed weapons ban unconstitutional:

It is now legal to carry a concealed weapon in all fifty states.  So if you’re in one of them, be careful.