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.