I don’t know what he’s doing, but I have an idea that its pretty devious. Madigan doesn’t let anything out of committee that is controversial unless he has looked down the decision tree and see how it benefits his Members.
A conceal carry bill just got out of Ag and Conservation in the House on a 12-1 vote. The Ag Committee roster shows a preponderance of downstate Dems who are generally opposed to gun control.
John Birch as the NRA ratings for the Lege Members on the committee. If you wanted to kill a bill like this you’d send it to judiciary and create an ad-hoc committee of three people who never meet. Madigan didn’t do that. It’s safe to say he has a plan.
Those Dems who voted on it just got good gun rights activist karma for moving the bill and innoculation in the next cycle on guns.
If it goes to the floor, downstate Dems can vote for it, upstate Dems vote against it and they both win. I haven’t thought through which Districts that might be in the middle and if any high priority races are in that category, but it puts Suburban Republicans in a hell of a position.
Regardless of one’s view on the merits, the policy has 68% opposition statewide according to a January 2004 poll. 56% of that opposition is strong opposition. 29% favor the legislation. In the greater Chicago area a Survey USA poll done for the Sun-Times and CBS-2 showed opposition of 75% in the area meaning if you are suburban Republican you don’t want to go on record on this issue. Part of your base is rabidly for it, but the average swing voter is rabidly against it.
The gun lobby is getting excited and thinks this might pass. They are deluding themselves. I doubt they have the votes in the House and Jones will either kill it or if he adopts a similar strategy to what I think Madigan is doing, Blagojevich will veto it. Contrary to claims that he needs downstate gun rights voters (he’s not getting them anyway), Blagojevich can use it like a hammer on an opponent with either suburban women who hate the law, or deflate any strong movement from gun rights activists to back a Republican who won’t support such a law. He probably wants this to come out so he can tee off on it. It also lets him go to the public and dismiss the Mayor’s criticism of his gun control record.
Wanna have some fun–ask these guys what they think of concealed carry
As an aside, one of the most annoying things about news stories is that they don’t include the Bill number. Why is that? Someone more motivated than me should ask Don Wycliff.
The more guns are covered in the media, the more people will be reminded of Blagojevich’s duplicity on the issue.
You are assuming people follow politics that closely. I doubt it gets to that point, but people don’t follow specific positions that well and he could play it up in the burbs.
When you look around the country Illinois is becoming an outlier on concealed carry. 37 have shall issue laws and may issue laws exist in another 9. Michael Madigan has recognized that for a few years now. He recognizes that it is just a matter of time.
As far as polling goes… Gun advocates are far more successful at the polls because they vote and they vote on the issue of guns. Women in the suburbs vote on a bunch of issues, party ID, etc. Saliency is the reason why concealed carry has been so successful.
Gun control advocates are running out states in which they can oppose concealed carry. Illinois will allow concealed carry at some point. It’s only a matter of time. The fact that the law has been pased in 46 states and mayhem hasn’t broken out, at some point, will set in.
Fyi, the only other states who don’t allow it are WI, NE, and KS.
BUt that list isn’t very accurate in terms of actually being allowed to carry. CA and NY in particular have a law allowing some to get a permit, but New York makes it nearly impossible to actually have a hand gun at all. The inevitability argument doesn’t hold up when one looks at the states who don’t have it or have some sort of may issue law that is effectively a no issue state.
The states most similar to Illinois fall into that category and so I see no reason given public opinion why it would change.
But more to the point, while the specific effect of concealed carry isn’t known (Lott’s work is discredited) the effect is not large one way or the other. But the issue isn’t about facts for most people–arguing that people will reasonably decide its no big deal when there is a visceral reaction to the subject creates a mismatch on how people decide on the issue.
One can point to rural Missouri and no great outbreaks of violence with the passage of CCW, but the opinion in the urban places (which effectively don’t have it yet) hasn’t budged as far as I can tell.
Guns don’t kill people, and ever since that liberal bastard George Ryan came along, neither does the Illinois Department of Corrections.