#BanTheBox: What could go wrong?

From The Governor's Twitter:

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Today I signed a law to #BanTheBox because everyone in #IL deserves a second chance when it comes to getting a job http://t.co/Ub1DGghchG
— Governor Pat Quinn (@GovernorQuinn) July 19, 2014

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Everyone in Illinois deserves a second chance when it comes to getting a job . . . and employers have no right to know (well, to ask, really) whether a job applicant has ever been convicted of a crime.

Look, I'm sympathetic to people who would like to turn things around after they've paid their debt, especially in a society where we've felonized so many things that most of us can't go more than a few days without committing one felony or other. But as Matt said the other day, the most reliable indicator of future criminal behavior is past criminal behavior. I can't see solving the problem of too few jobs for ex-cons by trying to force employers to hire more of them against their wills . . . . and I question whether this will do anything except lead more employers to be quicker to listen to "gut feelings" about applicants. How accurate will those gut feelings, as influenced by personal attitudes about race, sex, and appearance, be? Are we setting ex-cons up to get more opportunities at the expense of employers, or are we setting up law-abiding people to be judged too risky by employers who aren't allowed to ask about their histories?

WriteAPrisoner.com Now Has a Special Illinois Edition?

That's mighty thoughtful of them to include a link just for Illinois residents so we don't have to
 go searching through the profiles to find the prisoner most of us want to write a letter to.

Moms Demand Action Says They'll Win, Because You're Laughing at Them.

Moms Demand Action Hits Home (h/t to the Aurora Beacon News)

This was the answer Annie Craig of Aurora gave when I asked her why she had gone to Indianapolis recently to attend a gathering of the group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. Why Indianapolis? Because that’s where the National Rifle Association was holding its annual meeting.

And why over a mile away, out of sight of the convention? Because being threatened or spit on is such valuable street cred for this bunch that they're willing to accept stories without evidence, but being photographed amid a sea of friendly, happy people who all think their tiny band are dead wrong would be bad "optics."

“We wanted to go calmly, quietly, and unarmed to protest their leadership and the extremism they are promoting,” said Craig.

Uh huh. It was very important for them to go unarmed, which was why they hired armed security to bear the arms (and the karmic wounds inflicted by carrying guns in Indianapolis.) I actually did see two "Moms Demand Action" folks downtown, I should admit. They were riding yellow bicycles with little "Moms Demand Action" signs. I should have gotten photos, but I didn't. There were actually as many Moms Demand Action ladies downtown as there were NRA-specialist panhandlers, so they've got that going for them.*

“I don’t come from a gun family,” she said, “so I don’t understand gun mentality. Which is not to say that those who want guns and qualify, shouldn’t have them. We just want what we call ‘gun sense’ in our laws.” This gun sense includes universal background checks. This helps keep guns out of the hands of people who are convicted felons or mentally ill. They also want a ban on assault weapons and online guns sales.

But of course they do. Except . . . didn't you just quote Mrs. Craig as saying that her position doesn't mean that "those who want guns and qualify, shouldn't have them."? So, should I have my Colt AR15--the one made in 1971--or shouldn't I? 

No one is asking law-abiding gun owners to give up their guns or hunters to stop hunting. In the words of Moms Demand founder Shannon Watts: “Our issue is not really with the members of the NRA, 74 percent of whom believe there should be background checks on every gun purchase. We’re not anti-gun. We support the Second Amendment. Many of our moms are gun owners.” They simply want a return to common sense.

Well, no one except the people who want to ban various types of hunting, from feral hogs to wolves to bear, of course. And no one wants law-abiding gun owners to give up their guns except Mark Kirk and Dick Durbin, both of whom Craig specifically cites as politicians with "gun sense," both of whom have called for and voted for bans on specific firearms that I own. Or Watts' Axis of Bloomberg allies at CSGV, which have spent the last couple of weeks defending New Jersey's policy of banning every firearm except "smart guns," enacted before anyone even knew what form the technology would take or what it would be capable of doing. And, of course, Mrs. Craig herself, who was quoted elsewhere in the same article calling for a ban on "assault weapons." Remember that Colt AR-15 SP1 from 1971 that mentioned above? Do you want to take it away or not? And why should I believe your next answer when your last dozen were self-contradictory?

Craig told me how the NRA ignored them at first, but is now responding with anger, including snarky comments on social media, ridicule at how “small” Moms Demand Action is and outright lies about them. Watts recently had to take down her Facebook page due to all the hate and harrassment directed both at her and her family. But Moms Demand Action is not going away.

Uh huh. Moms Demand Action is one of the latest in a long, proud line of anti-gun activists who defame millions of people daily, refuse to engage with anyone who responds appropriately with facts and reason, and then complains about "harassment" and "bullying." Moms Demand Action has learned from other members of the Axis of Bloomberg on this front; like the CSGV. Their social media strategy for the past few months has been to ban anyone who politely disagreed on their Facebook page (ask me how I know) and carefully cultivate the few idiots who can't resist making threatening, profane or inappropriate comments. These they share widely, and they get twice the bang for their buck because reasonable gun owners who would condemn those comments never get the chance, at least not on the CSGV Facebook wall. In effect, they're curating a collection of gun owners or supporters who will act like the "insurrectionists" they want to believe are running things, and they're willing to prune the majority to get that collection.

Welcome to the internet, ma'am. It's an information superhighway.

“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” said Craig, “and our message is taking hold. I’m proud of our national legislators. Both Senators Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk have gun sense. I wish that were the case for all our local representatives.”

Oh, it's a marathon, not a sprint? Just gonna outlast all those fickle gun owners who are only in it for a couple of weeks of activist cred? Good luck with that. I've been active on this issue for 25 years--I was literally a child--while you just got paid to fly to Indianapolis and stand in a park a mile away from the people you claimed to be protesting. Good luck with your marathon.

Personally, I would like to see the NRA return to what they once were and promote responsible gun ownership and hunting rather than fighting common sense things like background checks. But the NRA leadership seems unlikely to return to that legacy. So I expect to see the Moms Demand Action group fight on. Check them out at www.momsdemandaction.org.

You'd like to see the biggest, best-known opponent of your favored policy go away and focus on something else? Well, gee, that does sound like a swell deal. Where do I sign up to have you and yours just fold the tents and go away? Is this that Reasonable Discourse ™ thing I keep hearing about? BTW, congrats to MDA for beating out the Muscular Dystrophy Association and countless MILF-themed adult entertainment operators to grab that choice URL.

Gandhi once said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” If this is true, then Moms Demand Action is well on its way to victory.

Right, sure, gotcha, but there's a catch: if this were true, then being the plucky underdog with no members would assure victory. If being ignored or laughed at were some kind of guarantee of success, the Ku Klux Klan and the Raelians should both be on their way to cultural dominance. Not everybody who's losing is just about to pull off an amazing upset; often you're losing because you're wrong, or because you're not as good at the game you're playing as the other guy is. Muhammad Ali suckered everybody in with the rope-a-dope, sure, but he could do that because he was that much better than almost anybody else. If your strategy is to let George Foreman hammer on you until he gets tired because it worked for Ali, there's bad news: it barely worked for Ali, and you probably aren't on his level. This is really just a restatement of the refrain we've been hearing for 15 years now, that "the gun nuts can't keep winning forever, they just have to start losing . . . we're due for a win!" Mathematicians can tell you there's no such thing as being due for a win. Now, if you want a heartwarming story of a small group of plucky outsiders who made a difference in the end after being ignored and then mocked, consider the scrappy underdogs at Illinois Carry or the Buckeye Firearms Association. Illinois Carry is celebrating its tenth year this summer, and I'll be carrying a pistol to the celebration. Even I didn't see that coming when we started.





*If you were there, maybe you saw these guys? Sitting, reading Bibles, with signs that said things like, "First they took my guns, then they took my home. Any help appreciated." I briefly wondered whether some grad student was writing a paper on generosity and social empathy at the NRAAM, but I'm pretty sure this was just artisanal panhandling, carefully crafted just for you and me.

IL Supreme Court Kicks MAIG/ICHV/LCAV While They're Down, Leaves Marks

The Illinois Supreme Court says it read Moore v. Madigan and it sides with the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.  Thus, in People v. Aguilar, the court finds that the 2nd Amendment not only protects the right to keep and bear arms inside your home, but also outside it.  That can't be welcome news if you're still recovering from your cheap-tequila hangover at MAIG headquarters or the ICHV intern desk today.  "The Colorado Thing," as it might delicately be put in the presence of such people, couldn't have been less than a crushing defeat.  They had it figured out!  They just knew it was going to work this time!  That roadrunner can't keep getting away forever!

And then, this.  Now, I'm not personally certain how much impact this will really have on most peoples' lives.  It certainly made a difference in young Mr. Aguilar's life; and I can imagine finding that the main benefit will be to people previously convicted under Illinois' now-defunct Unlawful Use of a Weapon and Aggravated Unlawful Use of a Weapon statutes. 

Less widely reported, probably because it was always an extreme long shot, is the fact that Aguilar also challenged Illinois' "Unlawful Possession of a Firearm" statute.  It was under that law that he was convicted of possessing a handgun while 17 years of age, and despite noting his argument that bearing arms was not limited to 18-year-olds in the colonial/founding era, the court ruled that this one is constitutional.  The case was remanded back to the lower state court for that reason; the lower court has been directed to sentence Aguilar for his UPF conviction, with the provision that they credit him all his time served for the AUUW conviction and also that he cannot be sentenced to a longer term than he would have served for the AUUW conviction, if they'd left it standing.

Jan Schakowsky: Just because she's out to get you doesn't mean you're not paranoid.

Jan Schakowsky . . . there's a name you haven't heard for awhile, huh?  If you're not from Illinois, maybe you've never heard of Congresswoman Schakowsky before, but she's politician-famous in Chicagoland. She has a long history of advocating for, as she puts it in this video, "pushing as hard as we can and as far as we can" to ban guns or, failing that, to harass citizens who want to use them.

This is the part where I sarcastically remind you that nobody wants to ban your guns and, by the way, you are clearly paranoid. Also that Jason Mattera is an unfair meanie.

One thing all this high-profile attention on guns and rights has done is to bring in a lot of people who really weren't paying any attention to the issue until a couple of months ago, on both sides.  Nothing wrong with that, but one effect of that influx of n00bs is that we now have an awful lot of people running around who are pretty sure they've got a simple solution and have no idea why the idiots who've been paying attention for the last decade or three haven't simply solved the problem already. In short, they don't know what they don't know. One of the things they're very sure of is that nobody wants to ban anybody's guns, and anyone who talks about gun bans is a stooge for the massive weapon cartels who pull the strings at the NRA. A good friend gave me a hell of a lecture recently; she'd put out the statement on Facebook that "nobody is going to ban your guns.  Get over it." I pointed out several times that this was not the issue; "I knew my attack on you wasn't going to work, so it's OK" is not an acceptable excuse. The point is that there are people who certainly would ban guns and confiscate my property if they had their way, and the only reason they don't have their way is that people like me prevent it by dint of hard work. 

• I don't have to let you crash my car because it's got seatbelts and airbags, and
• I don't have to let you torch my house because I have fire extinguishers, and
• I sure as hell don't have to shut up while knowledge-free debates over whether to infringe my rights and confiscate my property are carried out by my betters.

A "major victory" for gun control in Illinois? Let's think that one through.

SecondCityCop has a link to the Chicago Sun-Times' giddy piece on yesterday's defeat of concealed carry in Illinois, "Conceal-Carry bill fails in House," in which the Sun-Times' Springfield Bureau Chief, Dave McKinney, calls the vote a "major win" for gun control advocates.

SCC made several great points about the article, but those are their points and I'll let you read them over there. What interested me about the article was the assertion of "a big win." I don't see it.

Let's think about where gun control advocates in Illinois used to be and where they are today. I remember a very different situation until recently. Years ago, Mayor Daley's staff would write an annual package of 10-12 severe gun control bills--one-gun-a-month, state permits for gun shops to be granted or withheld on a whim, bans on everything from "assault weapons" to .50 caliber rifles to shotguns, bans on manufacturing "assault weapons" that would have prohibited Armalite and Les Baer from even manufacturing AR-15 rifles for the military or police . . . and would have made it a felony for a police officer or a serviceman to possess his issued M4 or M16 rifle in Illinois, even on duty (that law did allow for an "affirmative defense," at least.) Gun rights advocates spent every spring and fall scrambling to defend against all these bills and often 20-30 "minor" bills. Victories for gun rights consisted of language cleverly slipped into ostensibly anti-gun bills.

Then came a different spirit. The NRA and the ISRA and Guns Save Life and the Second Amendment Sisters and CORE and the new kid, Illinoiscarry.com, began to work together and coordinate their efforts more and more. There were turf battles and misunderstandings, but people were beginning to see results, too. The annual "lobby day" was rechristened "IGOLD" and exploded, growing into an annual event in which thousands of Illinois gun owners flood into the capitol building in Springfield and lobby for their rights en masse. Then came Heller v. D.C., and too quickly to be believed, McDonald v. Chicago. It's hard for a lot of people, I think, to really call up memories of what it was like in those not-so-long-ago days, but I remember it. It was depressing. We celebrated when we had years where we didn't lose any rights; keeping the status quo was a major win for us.

Now, let's look at 2011. What has changed in the past few years? Well, we're no longer playing defense. Our side is the one demanding change now; a year in which we have to settle for the status quo is "a big win" for gun control. If we don't engineer an overwhelming victory against long odds, creating a supermajority in both the House and the Senate and then overriding a veto, it's perceived as a loss. The expectations have changed massively; people now expect David to dominate Goliath and make him like it. And what does it look like from their point of view? Luckily, I've made a list:

• First, the roles are reversed: the anti-gun side has been reduced to playing defense, and they're giddy about stopping right-to-carry legislation they used to laugh off without thinking much of it.
• Second, have you noticed what you're not hearing out of Illinois this year? No assault weapons bans, no magazine bans? They were running all those bills this year, too . . . . but they came too close to losing on RTC and decided to let them all go by the wayside so that they could spend all their time stopping RTC.
• Third . . . what did it take to make that "big win" happen? It doesn't seem like Governor Quinn's threat of a veto actually did very much, despite the hype. Legislators are talking instead about personal phone calls from Mayor Daley, who frankly still has the power to "lobby" legislators by threatening the state jobs, city jobs, county jobs, patronage and other perks they hold so dear. Of course, Daley has 10 days left as Mayor of Chicago, so unless Rahm is just as powerful from the start as Daley is after 22 years as Mayor, that's the last time they can play that particular trump.
• Fourth and finally, when the dust settles, they may very well have stopped the bill from becoming law. But we won everything but the big prize: we changed the status quo, showed that RTC is a real issue in Illinois and that it's closer to passage than anyone believed, and we're going to end up with a list of every legislator who didn't vote for the bill, along with video footage of quite a few standing up on the floor of the House telling lies in the floor debate. They're like desperate criminals who've managed to retreat into the bank vault they were trying to cut open. We can't get them immediately, but they have nowhere to go, no idea what to do, and they left their tools out here for us to use. It's a matter of time.

On the one hand, excuses don't pay the bills, and it's true that we failed to win the war yesterday. On the other hand, we've won a lot of battles this year that not everyone recognizes, and it cost the other side dearly to get that "big win" in this one battle. Governor Quinn and Speaker Madigan have thrown away whatever good will they had remaining from downstate Democrat legislators after dragging them along on civil unions, the end of the death penalty in Illinois, and a massive income tax increase (full disclosure: I'm personally all for gay marriage and taking the power of life and death out of the hands of Illinois courts, but those issues are going to be poison pills forced down the throats of those Democrat legislators from downstate districts.) Several members of the Black Caucus, especially Rep. Monique Davis, have thrown away a chance to show that they're not completely in thrall to the Democratic leadership, and some very good organizers on Chicago's south side have taken notice. They held on, but they're in big trouble.

Illinois Speaker Mike Madigan: (217-782-5350) CALL NOW! LINES ARE OPEN!

If you want to see Illinois become a shall-issue, right-to-carry state this year, it's time to call your Representative in the Illinois House. If you're not sure who that is, you can type your address in here and find out who's your Representative and what his/her phone numbers are. Might as well call the Springfield offices; they should be back in town.

Done with that? Good. Now I'm going to ask you to do something that might seem odd: Call Mike Madigan and tell him you expect a fair vote on HB148 and you hope he'll vote for it.
Now, you might be scratching your head right now at the idea that Mike Madigan, Speaker of the House since 1983, leader of Illinois Democrats, father of Lisa Madigan, halfway-adopted-brother of Dick Daley, should be urged to vote for a right-to-carry bill. But please do it anyway. Remember that we don't actually need Madigan to vote for the bill (though that would help, Mike, if you're reading this) but we do need to show him that there's a true grassroots movement after this bill that will remember if he at least makes sure we get a fair floor vote, up or down.
If you aren't done with that because you're not sure of Mike Madigan's phone number, check the title again.

Got that done, too? Congratulations, you are now a hardcore grassroots activist willing to do more than 90% of gun owners can be bothered to do. Wanna buck for the top percentile? Call Glenn Poshard at Southern Illinois University and tell him to quit trying to kill right-to-carry in Illinois over his turf battle. Poshard is currently leading a group of college administrators lobbying to have the entire bill scuttled unless it makes it a felony to possess a firearm anywhere on campus; if you've ever taken a drive through Carbondale or Champaign, you know we're not just talking about the quad here. I know you'll all be polite and cheerful, but firm. Some of you may decide to mention that if Mr. Poshard doesn't call off the dogs, then even when we win right-to-carry, the fight won't be over for him, because I for one would become a near-full-time "Campus Carry" advocate in that event.

When you're trying to kill the carry bill that Chicago police unions want to see passed, you're so far out of touch that you might be out of sight.

Linky: If the Cook County State's Attorney Pokes Her Head Out Today, Spring Is On the Way

More on today's anti-gun Chicago press conference from John Boch at The Truth About Guns.

Cook County States Attorney Anita Alvarez Press Conference: A Defining Moment?

All the major control organizations gun are gathering tomorrow (Tuesday) in Illinois. They’ll meet-up with gun violence victims and local gun control advocates like Father ”Snuffy” Pfleger—who earned his nickname by calling for the “snuffing out” of the owner of a Chicago-area gun shop. They’ll head over to the office of Cook County State Attorney Anita Alvarez. The subsequent press conference will have one collective goal: to prevent Land of Lincoln legislators from enacting a law that would give citizens the right to carry a concealed firearm . . . . The Violence Policy Center, The Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence, the Mayors Against Illegal Guns—the entire gun control movement know that this could well be do-or-die for their cause. Alvarez’s press conference reveals their desperate rush into the breach, hoping to keep concealed carry from passing one more time. At least until the next time . . . .

Interestingly, the time and place of the conference were finally released Monday, at least to invitees:

We have a confirmed location for the Press Conference against HB 148 which would allow the concealed carrying of handguns. The Violence Policy Center will be releasing National data regarding crimes committed by Concealed Carry Permit
holders and we will be calling for lawmakers to oppose this legislation.

The press conference is scheduled for Tuesday, March 28th at 10:00 AM at the Blue Room of the James R. Thomspon Center, 100 W. Randolph.

Please let me know if you are able to attend this important press conference.
Thanks.

Perhaps more interestingly, members of Illinois Carry who contacted Alvarez's office were told that SA Alvarez is not scheduled to appear at any press events today at all. Of course, there was no public information on the press conference itself at all until Monday morning, so we'll all have to wait and see how accurate that is; but it's always possible that Alvarez never intended to appear. It's also entirely possible that either she or the organizers decided that it wasn't ideal for either to have her take a leading role, since she's so far out of the mainstream. None of the groups involved, with the possible exception of the Violence Policy Center, ever willingly admit that they do or have work to "ban guns," after all, and SA Alvarez has not always been as indirect as that:



(As we all marvel at SA Alvarez's honesty in the moment, we should all take a moment to thank Kurt Hofmann, St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner, for uploading that video to Youtube and ensuring that we can always remind people of exactly what we're facing.)

Anti-gunners getting desperate in Illinois? Rumors and facts. . .

Rumor has it that the national anti-gun groups are making desperate phone calls behind the scenes and finding their usual allies in the Illinois state capitol in a state of confusion. One insider says "nobody is talking to each other." One big reason for the confusion is probably this year's campaign to pass HB0148/SB0082, shall-issue right-to-carry bills titled the "Family and Personal Protection Act." The bills on the IL General Assembly website are not the final versions, by the way, so be warned if you're going there to read up.

Anyway, we've been over my optimism about this before, so suffice it to say that I honestly think this may be the year Illinois gets shall-issue right-to-carry. Groups like the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership apparently agree, because the day after thousands of gun owners flooded the state capitol for IGOLD, they hired Chris Carr from a Blagojevich-connected Chicago firm to lobby in Illinois. Obviously, none of that is rumor; it's public record. The question is, what do they think their lobbyist can say to Governor Quinn, Speaker Madigan or President Cullerton that will counteract the facts on the ground?

Yesterday, The Truth About Guns posted up a video of Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez in the infamous Chicago television appearance in which she told the host: "I believe there should be a law that says no one should have guns." That was Robert Farago's response to another sign of desperation: the rumor is that the Illinois Council Against Handgun Existence and other Illinois groups went looking for a politician willing to stand in front of the microphones for them at a major press conference early this week (Tuesday morning?) and Ms. Alvarez was the best they could find. Given the fact that every one of these groups denies that they want to ban guns, the fact that they feel obliged to go with Alvarez as their point-person on this would seem to imply that they couldn't get, for instance, House Speaker Michael Madigan, Senate President John Cullerton, or Governor Pat Quinn to be the face of resistance to right-to-carry in Illinois.

What do you suppose we should read into that?

Sigh. Illinois legislature, convicted felon, you know the drill.

http://www.illinoispolicy.org/blog/blog.asp?articlesource=3961
So it turns out Illinois State Rep. Robert Rita (veteran of five terms in the Illinois legislature) was convicted of a felony in Nevada not all that long before he ran for the General Assembly, and won . . . and won . . . and won . . . and won . . . and won.

Yes, smartasses, that's against the law in Illinois.

Yes, even in Cook County!

We just don't check.

Because if you can't trust a politician, who can you trust?

QOTD: IGOLD Arithmetic

"I already posted about a TV person in the hall with all of us there in our GOLDEN finest. With a straight face she said that our count was "OVER ONE HUNDRED FIFTY people in attendance".

YEAH, LADY. IN EACH ROW!"
--"Badwater Bill" at www.illinoiscarry.com

Media accounts of numbers vary widely, but that's . . . . hmmm.

When this picture was taken, from the railroad viaduct next to 3rd St., the back end of the crowd still hadn't turned the corner from 7th St. four blocks back. Maybe I'm too generous, but it's enough to make me wonder whether she genuinely flubbed it.

Priceless!

SecondCityCop got a letter from a reader who was in Springfield to watch HB0148 pass out of the House committee on Tuesday:

First, the city brought the same tired old group: the mayor's aide, [...], a tired old doctor, a bishop and the CPD supe. Imagine, their surprise when the people who were for concealed carry brought in the reps from the Chicago police sergeant's organization AND the Chicago police chiefs association AND the Illinois sheriff's organization and some more guys like that. I hear that the mayor's office called the chief's org after the vote and threatened to withdraw from the assn because the chief spoke on their side!

There's more and it's excellent, but you'll have to click the link if you want to read the whole thing.

QOTD: Doppelganger!

I have heard whisperings and rumors of my doppelganger in central Illinois for years, but I have never met him. Perhaps that is for the best; who can predict what dire consequences might be waiting if we ever met face-to-face, or heaven forfend, shook hands? I can't be the only one who saw TimeCop and decided that, for the safety of the universe, if I ever see someone who looks exactly like me, I will run away.

In any case, they say everyone has a twin out there somewhere, and mine is apparently still making coffee. I first began to hear rumors of his existence when I worked in a small local town called Chatham; there was a Starbucks there at the time, and people began to ask me whether I was picking up extra shifts and whether I would have gotten in trouble for waving back at them in the morning. One day, the local newspaper ran a photo from that Starbucks location, and I had to admit it was a pretty good likeness. Eventually, I left Chatham, and Starbucks closed that location down, and I forgot all about the whole thing until Thursday.

I was standing next to the IGOLD parade chatting with my highly-pregnant little sister, who was working in a bank branch along the route when we passed by. As we finished our conversation, I noticed a pretty young lady who was not moving along with the parade but watching us, and when I left, she followed. I've learned over the years that a lot of people who look hesitant or seem to be following someone at these events are trying to figure out how to approach and ask a question without feeling silly, so I stopped and introduced myself. She'd seen us go by and called her husband; he supports right-to-carry, but is traveling in Idaho this week, and he had asked her to sign our petition for him.

Unfortunately, we weren't circulating a petition that day, and she didn't have time to go into the Capitol, but I did find an extra registration packet so that she could fill out and mail the comment cards to their legislators and sign him up for IllinoisCarry.com. I thanked her for all the trouble she'd gone to, she thanked me for putting on IGOLD*, and we were ready to part ways when she blurted out:

"I just want you to know, this means you are officially my favorite barista!"

Is "barista" even a masculine noun? It sounds vaguely latin and firmly feminine to me, but I know Starbucks likes to make new words sometimes when they can't remember the old ones, the way I buy new wire strippers every once in awhile rather than try to find the old ones. Anyway, wherever you are out there, my handsome coffee-brewing friend, here's to you.


*"Well," he replied modestly, "others helped."

IGOLD 2011: A winner is you!

So, IGOLD 2011 has come and gone, and it's the top story on the front page of the Springfield State Journal-Register, and apparently they're passing out live TV news interviews to fat gun nuts in yellow hoodies now . . . . so that's new.

The paper is estimating that there were only about 1000-1500 in attendance; I would personally estimate 3000-5000 . . . . 3500-4500 if someone wanted more precision. I thought the numbers were close to last year's turnout, which I estimated at around 4000-4500. I am absolutely no kind of expert on this stuff, though, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt (just a little one, though; I mean, it's not as if I'm not awfully smart or anything.) Also in attendance at IGOLD were a couple of less-desirable elements. One was an older gentleman who was passing out some kind of, as one organizer put it, "Jim Crow literature." He was tossed out of the convention center without putting up much of a protest; must have known he had limited time to do such a thing. Hey, this is not Wisconsin, and we don't owe you a place to peddle your crazy.

Insiders at the capitol are telling each other that the current right-to-carry bill, HB0148/SB82, is nearly inevitable. Of course, this is Illinois politics, where things can get weird and the insiders are sometimes as surprised as everyone else, so I'll believe it when I see it. Still, the logic of the situation does have a certain persuasive force. Senate President Cullerton really does have a lot of pressure coming from downstate Democrats, and he's starting to see more from suburban and even some Chicago districts, too. On the other hand, he has to know that the anti-gun contingent of Chicago legislators may not go completely quietly. Very likely, President Cullerton is wondering whether he can wait for Speaker Madigan's House to pass HB0148 and send it to the Senate, at which point he would have more cover to look for a solution. The big flaw in that plan (well, from my point of view, maybe not from his) is that Speaker Madigan might be waiting for Cullerton to make the first move, for similar reasons. I have this terrible vision of the two of them sitting across a table, each waiting for the other to make the first move, like two old men at the coffee shop sitting with the check between them, each trying his best to outlast the other . . . . casually.

However, listening to rank-and-file legislators talk to each other yesterday was a revelation. The buzz in the capitol hallways was entirely about right-to-carry, which I've never seen at IGOLD before. I don't mean legislators talking to IGOLD participants--that always sounds like someone trying to sell you your own ideas--but the little bits and bites of conversation you pick up between two staffers in an elevator, or a couple of lobbyists on the steps. These people are all talking amongst themselves about right-to-carry and the mood is infectiously optimistic.

There's Still Time to Jump on the Right-to-Carry Bandwagon in Illinois

. . . . but maybe not, you know, a LOT of time. Consider the following:

• Yesterday, HB0148, the Family and Personal Protection Act, passed out of the Illinois House Agriculture and Conservation Committee onto the floor. This was expected; that's why pro-gun bills go to the A&C and anti-gun bills go to Judicial, to ensure that they all have a fair chance to make it to the floor. Usually.
• There were some surprises, though. The biggest one, which I saw in only one mainstream media report (and which I've now lost, somehow) is that Illinois law enforcement organizations are now overwhelmingly in favor of right-to-carry:
• Several papers reported that two sheriffs testified in favor of the bill; almost no one mentioned that the Illinois Sheriffs Association went on record in favor, or that the sheriffs who testified noted that the vote at their meeting was nearly unanimous, with only Chicago's Cook County Sheriff voting no.
• Almost no one mentioned that Chief Eric Smith (of Sherman, IL) was in attendance not just for himself but to represent the Illinois Chiefs of Police. That's right, even the politically-appointed chiefs of police across Illinois voted this week to endorse HB0148.
• Although the Chicago Police Department is, of course, officially opposed, their rank-and-file supports HB0148 so much that the Chicago Police Sergeants' Association went on record in favor. This is a HUGE step in Illinois.

Nor are those the only hopeful signs. As you may have seen in this space before, Illinois actually has fairly pro-gun majorities in both its state House and Senate. The only reason they haven't passed right-to-carry legislation in the past few years has been that the legislative leaders have chosen to use parliamentary maneuvers to prevent floor votes in the Senate and to require supermajority votes in the House. This, combined with the certainty that all the Governors involved would veto any RTC bill, has kept any undecided legislators from seeing a reason to stick their necks out and be among the last few votes to create a supermajority or override a veto.

Yesterday, though, Andy Brownfield at the Springfield State Journal-Register asked Governor Quinn's spokeswoman whether he would follow through with his promise of a veto, and she would say only that the Governor would "give a concealed-carry bill the same consideration he gives any other bill." That's no promise, certainly, but it does have a certain open-door quality about it. It would have been easy to say, "Yes, the Governor promised the people of Illinois to veto this dangerous legislation and he will." But they didn't. Does that mean Quinn is open to a deal? Your guess is as good as mine, but it clearly doesn't say that his mind is made up.

At the risk of repeating myself, I'm seeing a lot of commentary that Quinn would "never" do this and Cullerton and Madigan would "never" do that. These people are ignoring the changing times. Illinois downstate Democrats (and some upstate, too) come from conservative districts that only vote Democrat because they're full of farmers and union workers. It's an uneasy relationship at the best of times because of their other relationship--the one with "those Chicago Democrats." Now Governor Quinn has spent a huge amount of their political capital, and his, on borrowing billions of dollars and raising taxes by about 66%. Those downstate Democrats from conservative districts had to vote for those things in order to get them through, and they expect payback. They expect Quinn and the leaders to give them some kind of red meat issue they can trumpet back in the district, and right-to-carry is perfectly suited. To all that, you can add that IGOLD is perfectly timed this year, bringing thousands of gun owners to the capital (and the capitol) tomorrow to demand right-to-carry. That either gives politicians a push to do the right thing or cover to do what they promised not to do, depending on your point of view.

This will come down to the wire, and even the insiders will not be sure of the outcome until it's over. That's not much of a prediction, but it is mine and I expect it to come true.

Requests and Dedications: Is it OK for the state police to give the AP a list of all legal gun owners in Illinois?

If you read Roberta X (and if you don't, you should) then you've already seen several of my words on the latest anti-gun hijinks in Illinois (Roberta took them right out of my mouth.)

I've still got a few left that she didn't think of, though, and Keith asked in comments, "Are you going to address the FOID thing?" so I suppose I have an excuse.

First, consider the problem. Essentially, the Attorney General of Illinois, Lisa Madigan, has issued a letter to the Illinois State Police directing them to release a list of the names (but not home addresses) of everyone who holds a FOID card in Illinois. The FOID card is not a carry permit, but a license to possess, own, or transfer a firearm or ammunition. Outside narrow exceptions, an Illinois citizen needs a FOID card just to possess a single round of loaded ammunition. The ISP is fighting this order by asking for an official opinion from the AG and seems ready to take the issue to court. Several bills currently in the legislature, including HB 0007, would prohibit the release of such a list in the future. In practical terms, this doesn't affect me personally, because I'm out and proud and on all the troublemaker lists you can be on in this state. I can easily imagine a lot of others, especially the two-thirds of the population who live in Chicagoland, worrying about their jobs and their relatively harassment-free lives going away in some situations. Some of my other friends who try to "fly under the radar" as gun owners in their neighborhoods to avoid taking chances with thieves are now imagining their names in the newspapers as "gun owners." Chances are, though, that HB 0007 is going to would pass with a large majority after the firestorm they've created here, if it hadn't mysteriously been bottled up in a committee. Few people seem to realize that the Illinois Legislature is dominated by votes ranging from pro-gun to moderate on guns. Year after year, the other side introduces packages of anti-gun bills which go down to defeat, and most pro-gun bills short of repealing the FOID or creating right-to-carry pass.

If all that's true (and I think it still surprises even a lot of Illinois gun-rights activists to look at the legislature that way) then why doesn't right-to-carry pass? The answer is that Illinois has nearly all-powerful legislative leaders. Mike Madigan rules the House with an iron fist, and John Cullerton inherited a near-dictatorship in the Senate from Emil Jones. Right-to-carry would pass the Illinois House and Senate in a heartbeat without that power; Cullerton, like Jones before him, bottles up RTC bills in unfriendly committees and prevents floor votes entirely. Mike Madigan simply rules that RTC would affect home rule (another quirk of Illinois is that we have thousands of home-rule cities; it's not just Chicago) and therefore require SUPER majorities. In other words, everyone including Madigan knows, whether they acknowledge it or not, that there are clear pro-gun majorities in both houses of the Illinois legislature. Illinois readers will probably recall that the Attorney General mentioned above is Lisa Madigan, the daughter of the aforementioned Mike Madigan.

Now we consider one more question: why now? Why did Lisa Madigan decide that now is the time to make a push to join the ranks of the newspapers and state governments that have been pilloried over the years for publishing lists of CCW holders nationwide? I tend to agree with Thirdpower at Days of Our Trailers: this is a case of "Wagging the Madigan." The idea here is almost certainly to create a new controversy over gun control, one where the other side has at least some of the initiative. That's necessary because shall-issue right-to-carry legislation is gaining ground every day; Madigan's super-majority strategy could be overwhelmed this year by simply meeting his requirement, and some sources have been reporting rumors that Cullerton and even Governor Quinn have been feeling a lot of pressure to move. RTC is clearly coming in Illinois, so their three choices are to jump on the bandwagon, get run over by the bandwagon, or set the old warehouse district on fire and hope everybody has to jump off the bandwagon to pass buckets. It seems they chose the third. The problem for them is that this is an obnoxious and dangerous strategy that's already pissing off all the wrong people. They may be able to do some harm with it to a lot of innocent folks who didn't volunteer to be game pieces, but I don't believe they themselves have that much to gain. RTC is not going away, if that's what they were hoping. It's a genuine grassroots movement with no rent-a-crowds or astroturf involved . . . . just distracting the public and waiting for the furor to die down is not going to work. I attended the funeral a couple of months ago of a man who fought like a lion for RTC; we called him "Ol' Coach," but his real name was Gene Martin. Gene's fear was that he wouldn't live to see RTC pass, and his frustration came out in angry words from time to time. He was right, as it turns out, but if anyone thinks his friends will move on to something else if they wave a few distractions around, they've misjudged.

Tomorrow, at 2 p.m., there will be a committee hearing on shall-issue right-to-carry (The Family and Personal Protection Act, HB0148) at the Illinois state capitol. The bill will pass out of the committee; the important thing tomorrow will be the testimony and the press coverage. I've already been contacted by local TV news about this, so I know at least some are paying attention. Will they drop that attention to rush off and get quotes from Lisa Madigan about her Wag-the-Madigan scheme? I doubt it.

Then, on Thursday at 10:30 a.m. in the Prairie Capital Convention Center in Springfield, the doors will open for IGOLD. Thousands of gun owners will take the day off work and pay their way to the capital to spend the day marching, demonstrating, and meeting with their legislators. We will rally in the Convention Center, and we will march across town (the streets are closed by the Springfield Police.) We will meet and rally again in front of the capitol . . . . but we will also pour into the capitol by the thousands and meet individually with our representatives.

The problem, if you're Lisa Madigan or Mike Madigan or John Cullerton or Pat Quinn, is how to create a big enough distraction to stop a bandwagon that big. Ignoring the problem for the past few years has not made it go away. These people are hearing footsteps; shall-issue right-to-carry is coming. The only thing they really control in this fight now is how long it takes and how much credit or blame they get when the shouting is over.

ISRA Annual Meeting at Rend Lake

Hooray! The wi-fi is alive again!

I'm sitting here next to Thirdpower from Days of Our Trailers in the legislative update session at the Illinois State Rifle Association's annual meetings. We're at the "resort" at Rend Lake a little bit south of Mt. Vernon, deep in the real southern Illinois. This is the part of Illinois that looks and sounds like Kentucky, except when you sit in a room full of people from northern and central Illinois.

Last night I rolled in with the whole family in the dark of the night and managed to get everyone to collapse more or less on or near a bed, so that was a win. This morning I got the boys up early and we headed out to the trails. We skipped out on the Personal Protection seminar (I've been to it before) and spent the time walking around the lake instead. We picked flowers for mom, watched deer and rabbits, found tracks and scat of deer, coyotes, turkeys and squirrels, and generally wasted a couple of hours in excellent style.

Now here we are in nearly-beautiful Conference Room A. It's not the most cheerful place, but the mood is light. Why?

• Chicago is on its heels. Their new ordinance is clearly a ploy to undo McDonald, and according to Don Moran of the ISRA, the clauses that criminalize firing ranges and training in the city have created a bottleneck. There may be a hundred thousand Chicagoans who want to own firearms, and there are tens of thousands who do legally own firearms that were registered prior to 1982--but they need training to get the new Chicago Firearms Permit, too, and where can they get it? There aren't enough trainers (because the ordinance defines the qualifications in a way designed to exclude many trainers) and if you could find them, there aren't enough lanes on ranges in the state to get the training done in a reasonable amount of time. That's the bad news. The good news is that judges can figure this stuff out, too, and my impression (Mr. Moran didn't say this, so don't blame him) is that this is just another reason this ordinance is so vulnerable.
• Mayor Daley is on his way out . . . . and who will replace him? Nobody here will hazard much of a guess, and it's not likely to be a gun blogger. But replacing Daley, the man to whom all favors are owed, has to mean Chicago clout flying all directions. No matter what many candidates say publicly, it's hard to believe that they're privately planning to hitch their wagons to the Brady Campaign Against Success and continue Daley's crusade without his power or connections. Even if someone does want to try it, who can really replace Daley? The only name I've heard with the reputation and personality to remind people of either Mayor Daley is Rahm Emanuel, but he's essentially the Jody Weis of City Hall. Weis is the Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, yes, but his police force hates him with a passion. He's a fed from the FBI, they say (J-Fed, to be specific) and he's never "been the police." He doesn't understand their department or policing in general, and Chicago cops figure he's there to take the department apart and clamp down on any cop who gets out of line. They don't trust him a bit, and on Emanuel's first day as Mayor, he'd have the same situation at City Hall, except that the people distrusting him and talking about this outsider from Washington are people with real power in Chicago. His job would be survival from day one. Others have a better chance of winning than Emanuel, but none of them look like The New Daley.
• Statewide, Governor Quinn is in trouble. He hasn't lost yet, but he's a little behind and, more importantly, not showing any signs that he's going to get things moving any time soon. Democrats, even Chicago Democrats, are starting to get in touch with ISRA and NRA leaders and ask how they can get right with Illinois gun owners. Votes for concealed carry are piling up in the legislature; we're likely looking at enough votes to pass a bill right now, but not enough to overcome a veto (Governor Quinn has promised to veto any carry bill, while Republican Bill Brady has promised to sign it--I'm just saying.)

IGOLD 2010 is here

If you can't come to IGOLD 2010 in Springfield today, there are still two ways you can help. The first is to call your local Chicago news outlet of choice and ask them when their story on IGOLD will run.
The second is to go to www.illinoiscarry.org and donate whatever you can afford to support IGOLD and IllinoisCarry. IllinoisCarry is a not-for-profit corporation (but not, legally speaking, a charity, and donations are not tax-deductible.) running at a consistent loss, funded by donations from its "employees," none of whom are paid. Unlike anti-gun groups like the Violence Policy Center, which do little more than convert Joyce Foundation funds into 6-figure salaries for people who literally do Google and Nexus searches for a living, IllinoisCarry does nothing but advocate for right-to-carry in Illinois. I can testify that being a Director at IllinoisCarry has cost me a considerable amount of money so far, to say nothing of time, and the officers pay more for the privilege than I do. If you can help, you can be sure that your money will be spent wisely and gratefully.




IGOLD 2010 is today. Springfield will welcome thousands of gun owners. . . . .

We will fill the Prairie Capital Convention Center . . . .


We will march down Capitol Avenue in a throng of thousands . . . .


We will gather on the steps of the Capitol, under the well-polished nose of Lincoln's statue and the steady gaze of King's. We will celebrate our freedom and demand our rights.
Join us.

Right-to-Carry Town Hall Meeting . . . in Chicago!

Tomorrow night, the UTATU Collective (a student service group at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago) will host a Right-to-Carry informational town-hall meeting at the Carruthers Center for Inner-City Studies near the corner of Oakwood and Langley, just a few blocks off the lake on the south side of Chicago.

That's right, Chicago. And the night after that, there'll be an identical meeting in Elmhurst, IL--one of the most putatively anti-gun of the Chicago suburbs.

All the recent focus on McDonald v. Chicago has tended to take some focus off the very real political changes in Illinois regarding right-to-carry. Five or ten years ago I would have laughed at the idea of putting on a meeting like this one. Tomorrow I expect it to be packed.

I'm planning to make the drive; I've laid in a supply of audiobooks so I can take off after work tomorrow, zoom up to Chicago listening to Pale Horse Coming by Stephen Hunter and then slog back home listening to The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by the late, great Carl Sagan. Thursday morning is going to suck. There was a time when I could drive eight hours in a night, roll into home at one or two in the morning, and be raring to go in the morning . . . . but that was before I got old.

Ess You What Huh What?

I'm glad I'm not the only one wondering what on earth the "States United to Prevent Gun Violence" is supposed to be. Their name is only slightly less stupid than the "Freedom States Alliance," which is just about a syntactically null statement (what are the "Freedom States," and why do they advocate cracking down on freedom?)
Seriously, "States United?" You idiots are claiming to be a coalition of state governments or something. You are, at best, a sort of shell corporation consisting of various vestigial state-level gun-banning groups that represent tiny minorities of the voters in your respective states. You are entirely full of crap, and I've never heard of you. My guess is that the SUPGV was created out of whole cloth quite recently as a way to pool that sweet, sweet grant money from the Joyce Foundation people so everyone can keep feeding, even if each goober had to accept less largesse than he's grown accustomed to.

Being a gun-ban astroturf activist is not a fun or respected life, but it beats working for a living, I guess.