Ill. Enacts Concealed Gun Law

Last in country to pass one allowing them

Illinois became the last state in the nation to allow public possession of concealed guns as lawmakers rushed Tuesday to finalize a proposal ahead of a federal court's deadline.

Both chambers of the Legislature voted to override changes Gov. Pat Quinn made to the bill they approved more than a month ago. Even some critics of the law argued it was better to approve something rather than risk the courts allowing virtually unregulated concealed weapons in Chicago, which has endured severe gun violence in recent months.

The Senate voted 41-17 in favor of the override Tuesday afternoon after the House voted 77-31, margins that met the three-fifths threshold needed to set aside the amendatory veto. Quinn had used his veto authority to suggest changes such as prohibiting guns in restaurants that serve alcohol and limiting gun-toting citizens to one firearm at a time.

Quinn had predicted a "showdown in Springfield" after a week of Chicago appearances to drum up support for the changes he made in the amendatory veto. The Chicago Democrat faces a tough re-election fight next year and has already drawn a primary challenge from former White House chief of state Bill Daley, who has criticized the governor's handling of the debate over guns and other issues.

Comments

[Dan]

This is misleading. This wasn't really a law to ALLOW concealed carry. The circuit court had already determined the law banning it unconstitutional and invalidated it effective 12am july 10th.

Concealed carry was going to be legal today regardless of if they passed any law or not because the ban law would officially be invalidated. What they did was rush to put together a law to severely RESTRICT the ability to exercise the right, because if they had no new law in place by the deadline there would be no restrictions whatsoever by default.

The law they just passed creates so many obstacles to it that concealed carry is effectively still banned. THAT was the point of passing the law. They have no regard for the rule of law. Every time their law gets invalidated they'll just create a new law that makes it nearly impossible in some creative new way and try to pretend that their "common sense controls" are even remotely close to passing constitutional muster.

[Tejicano]

A couple other points to consider -

The Illinois state police now have 180 days to implement the new CCW law so I wonder how long they are going to drag their feet as well. I also expect they will give some local authority on how applications are accepted and processed - I can imagine Cook county will make it more difficult to get a completed form through the process than it will be in other locations.

But the up side is that now nationwide reciprocity has some level of possibility even if that chance currently is similar to that of a snowball in Hell.