Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois
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Sangamon
County Rifle Association Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights Springfield, Illinois |
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As I said last month, there are a lot of bills moving in a lot of areas. The Senate President used his Rules Committee which he totally controls to move a couple of bills which would otherwise have died. Things have been changed
around quite a lot in the
legislature.
There's an Ag committee and, a criminal law never went through an Ag
Committee before, it went through the Judiciary Committee where it
belongs. But if they couldn't get it out of Committee, they'd
move it to a new Committee where they had a lot of friendlier people
and locked in votes where it would get out of Committee. Senate
President Emil Jones took a couple of anti-gun bills and put
them in his Rules Committee where they passed but they're not going to
pass the full Senate so I don't really concern myself about bills which
have no chance of passing either House.
Remember several years
ago when we tweaked the Unlawful use of a Weapon
law so that you could clearly understand how to transport your firearm,
which at the final writing of the law said, that your gun had to be
unloaded and in a case and you had to be a FOID card holder and that
was it. There were no other conditions, restrictions or
confusion about where
the ammo was or where it could be, in your vehicle, in your blazer or
your non trunk carrying vehicle. All your gun had to be was
unloaded and completely encased or in some other form of shipping
container.
Well now come to find
out, the City of
Chicago, bless their little
hearts, has a municipal law which says that your gun has to be broken
down or in the trunk or they can confiscate both your gun and your
vehicle. This of course is not a state law written by the Illinois
Legislature
through your representatives so that you can vote on it.
This is a law written by the Chicago City Council writing firearms laws that affect the residents of the entire state. Some municipalities say; You've got a unloaded gun in a case so we're confiscating both it and your vehicle. When you tell them I'm totally legal anywhere in the State of Illinois, they'll tell you that you're not legal in our municipality because we've got a municipal law. So finally the
Legislature is about fed up with that along with the
program people obviously. So along with the National Rifle
Association they've got a bill, SB2104, that has moved through the
legislature that says municipalities such as Chicago, Wilmette and
Evanston cannot pass a more restrictive transport law regarding your
firearm than the State Legislature has passed. In reality,
without having Concealed Carry in the State of Illinois,
the Legislature has passed what I consider to be a decent transport
law. Your firearm has to be unloaded and it has to be in a
case. You can have it in the trunk, in the front or back seat
or
in a back pack. You're transporting your unloaded firearm to
wherever you're taking it to for lawful purposes.
SB2104 has passed both
the House and the Senate Committee and is going
to be voted on in the full Senate. This bill, SB2104, says no
more of these municipal restrictions, they are going to be vetoed,
taken out and ruled illegal. There will be only one lawmaking
body for transport of firearms in the State of Illinois and that is the
State Legislature. So we're pushing a do pass for SB2104 this
week.
Some time ago there was
a gentleman who was arrested for back pack
carry. His gun was unloaded and encased and he was a FOID
card
holder so he was totally legal under Illinois law. He was
placed
in all kinds of threats and all kinds of jeopardy illegally.
He
sued and won $50,000 from the county sheriffs deputies who arrested him.
It was lawful transport
under Illinois law which says box, case,
shipping container or other container. The new law will only
affect municipal ordinances that are stronger than the Illinois
Unlawful use of a Weapon law as amended. For many
years the
Unlawful use of a Weapon law was so vague that the law on what you
couldn't do was on page 9 and way back on page 27 were the exceptions
to the law.
Someone asked the
difference between this and preemption.
Preemption affects all kinds of other firearm laws, gun bans,
restrictions and assault weapons. As you know Cook County has
an
assault weapons ban.
Cook County has passed a more restrictive law than the Illinois Legislature. Hence the City of Chicago has done similar restrictions. They have a hand gun ban in Chicago. Thats more restrictive than the Illinois Legislature said and guns are legal in the rest of the state. Lobbyists, through the ISRA and the NRA, have continuously lobbied the State Legislature and said look folks, if laws are going to mean anything, they have to be uniform. You can't be legal in Shawnee National Forest and illegal in Chicago and you're still in the same state. That's crazy lawmaking. Its foolishness and people don't understand laws like that nor will they obey them nor should they. There should be one uniform lawmaking body for the entire state that everybody has access to, that everybody has a voted representative on and, that everybody agrees will write the laws and we'll live under them. Not that you're illegal in Wilmette, Winnetka, and DuPage and Cook Counties and you're legal in all the rest of the State. That's just foolishness so we're trying to being uniformity to the firearms lawmaking process. I think this law is going to go a long way towards doing that. If you don't travel very much and I never get up to the City Chicago or to Cook County, so it doesn't affect me at all. But I shouldn't speak just for myself and our group shouldn't speak just for our group because a lot of people do travel and could fall under these restrictions and their unfair laws. We should support SB2104 because there might come a time when we need their votes to support something that we need in downstate Illinois that doesn't affect them. We should all work together as a unified program. If Senate Bill 2104 passes the Senate and gets sent to the Governor, he is probably going to be reluctant to sign it and like the Hall Demar bill, we're going to be back to an override vote. It depends on the margin that it passes in the Senate. If its a veto proof majority, it doesn't matter what the Governor does with this piece of legislation. So I'm going to keep monitoring it and I'll report back to you on what it does. Someone also asked me about the possibility of a state wide handgun ban. A state wide handgun ban would not pass the Illinois Legislature at this point. Downstate is still too strong. Of course when law makers are in session I personally feel your rights are always in jeopardy because they are continuously trying to pass restrictions, governances, covenants, bans, limitations of all types, nibbling at the edges of our rights. And of course they are found unconstitutional. Armed Pilots On a totally unrelated issue, I want to say a few words about John McGaw and his Transportation Security Administration and their refusal to allow the pilots to be armed. Well Congress acted on that and allowed the pilots to be armed. There are a hundred thousand commercial airline pilots in the United States. Two years after the law was passed allowing the armed pilots, five thousand of them have been licensed and are armed on commercial crafts. The process is slow. They made the training site way out in YoYo Land, Arizona, three and one-half hours from the nearest airport. The pilots are pitching a holy fit about their putting all kinds of restrictions on them including the dreaded psychological testing. They had one guy who was a pilot in the Korean War and is now licensed to fly the largest commercial passenger jet and they're saying that he's not fit to carry a handgun in the cockpit.So we have big problems with the way the TSA is administering this Armed Pilots law. I'm going to give you an update and I'm working on it right now. There is a big front page article on it in the Chicago Tribune that is surprisingly well written. It states the case the way it really is. I know some pilots from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association that I am going to speak to. Some of them have taken this training so I can find out the facts such as; Is the test biased, are the instructions fair, and is the psychological testing rigged in any way? When I get the facts about how this process is going, I'll report these facts to you a month or two from now. Also the Transportation Security Administration which is run under McGaw, who is a horrible anti-gun guy, is now being dismantled totally and put into the Homeland Security Department. So I'll bring an update. But I'd like to see them do away with the whole agency and I think some pilots would say good riddance. |