Governor Pritzker is now in office Illinois gun owners are going to see every kind of gun control scheme ever invented and introduced into legislation this coming year and on into the next. The claim will be that these gun control ideas that will be written into legislation will prevent crime and save us all but, while at the same time, the sponsors will mouth the words that we believe in the Second Amendment. Nothing, of course, is further from the truth. The veil of deception is being pulled aside more every day and more gun owners are realizing the anti-gunners’ real goal: total destruction of civilian gun ownership. Gun owners are facing a well-financed, well-orchestrated campaign to destroy the Second Amendment.
Their goal is not to talk to gun owners but to influence the non-gun-owning public unfamiliar with firearms and stampede them in to fearing firearms and those who own firearms. They use arguments that are not true but that doesn’t matter to them. The problem is the endlessly financed propaganda machine of the Michael Bloomberg and George Soros types relentlessly filling the airwaves. That is a big problem and we have to face it.
The failing health of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is sending the left-wingers and their fellow travelers, and the media in to a combination of anaphylactic shock and hysteria. While I wish the Justice no ill will, it is time for her to step down from the United States Supreme Court. When this does happen it will be Katy Bar The Door in the United States Senate. While I am not sure what kind of left-wing horse and pony show will be staged for the nominee and the public, I am sure there will be one.
Unshockingly, perennial anti-gun gunners Dianne Feinstein (D-California), Chris Murphy (D-Conn), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn) and a host of the usual suspects rolled out the latest version of their so-called assault weapons ban. While this is going nowhere in Congress, it was meant to push similar bans in the various states, Illinois being a primary target. A few weeks ago, I did a quick analysis of the Illinois General Assembly. The final numbers are now in and are below.
Illinois General Assembly by the numbers:
• First, there are 177 members of the General Assembly.
• The House has 118 members and the Senate has 59. Each Senate District is divided into two single member House Districts.
• Each Senate District is comprised of approximately 217,468 people while each House District is comprised of approximately 108,734 people. The number of people represented in each legislative district will change when the legislative district maps are redrawn in 2021, after next year’s (2020) statewide census.
• The November 6th 2018 general election dramatically changed the makeup of Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate.
• The State House Democratic majority, under Speaker Michael Madigan, increased from 67 members to a veto-proof 74 members.
• The Republican ranks dwindle from 51 to 44.
• In the State Senate, Democratic President John Cullerton’s ranks go up from an already veto-proof 37 to 40 while the GOP falls from 22 to 19.
• To pass a bill out of the House it takes 60 votes; a super majority is 71 (Veto-Proof)
• To pass a bill out of the Senate it takes 30 votes; a super majority is 36 (Veto-Proof)
• As of Monday, January 14th, J.B. Pritzker was sworn in as Governor and every other statewide office holder sworn in was a Democrat.
• As far as the Courts are concerned, the Illinois Supreme Court has seven members elected from five different judicial districts.
• Cook County alone gets to elect three justices to the Supreme Court and the other four are elected in districts outside of Cook County.
• Democrats have a 4-3 majority on the Court because Justice Thomas Kilbride represents the Third Judicial District. Republican justices represent the 2nd, 4th and 5th districts.
• We have a challenging, but not impossible, environment in Illinois.
• There were 4.5 million votes cast on Election Day in 2018, but there are about 2 million FOID card holders in Illinois.
• If gun owners stand united – we can elect pro-Second Amendment candidates in Illinois.
This is why IGOLD is so important.
The annual Illinois Gun Owner Lobby Day (IGOLD) is March 27th, 2019 in Springfield.
Bring your friends and family members and help us take a stand for the Second Amendment in Illinois.
If we stand up and stand together, we can and will be successful.
You can see by the numbers why IGOLD is so important this year. Our guest speaker is David A. Keene, the Editor at Large of The Washington Times, the nation’s largest conservative daily print newspaper, and past president of the National Rifle Association (NRA). It’s very important you attend this year. Go to the website www.isra.org and click on the link to with all the details.
Long-time Chicago Alderman, Edward Burke, has been charged with corruption by the United States Attorney’s Office after an FBI investigation. Burke has been an Alderman for 50 years, taking the position after his father died in 1968. No one has to slip two nitroglycerin tablets under their tongue when they hear a Chicago Alderman has been charged with corruption. The fun part of this situation is that for gun owners, it is a little retribution for what Burke and former Mayor Jane Byrne did to gun owners in the 1980s. If you owned handguns or long guns, each one had to be registered each year. It was a loathsome process that took three months, was expensive, and if anything went wrong and the time period was not met, the gun could never be registered in the city ever again – even if it was the city’s fault. This actually also applied to muzzle loading firearms. Every person needed to take a handgun safety course even if they were registering a muzzle loader. The Chicago handgun registration scheme was wiped out when we passed the Concealed Carry Act in 2013.
When Burke’s office was raided, the FBI found 23 firearms in his office and more at his homes. Burke has to dispose of them but that isn’t the point. Burke’s hypocrisy and the hypocrisy of the entire anti-gun left is spotlighted by this incident. This is elitism at its finest. Not only do I hope they throw the book at Alderman Burke but the entire library as well. Alderman Burke’s wife, Anne Burke, is a Justice on the Illinois Supreme Court.
Laavion Goings Jr. was quite familiar to the Chicago Police Dept. He had been arrested along with his father, a habitual criminal, on drug charges. Goings had been out of jail two months when he tried to hold up a woman on the street in Chicago on Monday. The woman had a concealed carry permit and fired at Goings before he could use his illegally obtained and possessed gun. Goings was hit in the chest and died Tuesday morning. Goings had previously assaulted a police officer but those charges were dropped. This guy should have never been out of jail. This time he got dropped before the “soft on crime system” could drop the charges. Good.
As expected, Senate President John Cullerton removed his motion to reconsider SB337, the gun dealer licensing bill. This is a draconian dealer licensing bill which will drive many small dealers out of business. The Senate now has 30 calendar days to certify the bill and send it to the Governor. Governor Rauner will veto this bill if he gets a chance but he won’t get the chance. It will land on newly elected Governor Prtizker’s desk and he will sign the bill. This means SB337 will be signed by a Governor who was not in office when the bill was passed; the idea of sine die is in danger in the Illinois Constitution. This could be a problem in the future. If this smells like a beach full of rotting fish to you, you are not alone.
There is no question that unbridled illegal immigration is a threat to our Second Amendment Rights, as well as many other facets of the United States we know and love. The left, of course, doesn’t see it that way and is on a constant quest to tear the United States apart. Flooding the country with illegal immigrants is a sure way to do that. The left-wing news media, left-wing organizations and left-wing politicians place constant attacks on the idea of The Wall, while saying there are other ways of securing the border. Those other ways include such things as drones, more personnel, warning systems and on and on. So, if they are willing to fund those things, why not The Wall?
The answer is really simple. If you build a wall it will stand there 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The wall doesn’t care if it is hot, cold, raining, snowing or a dust storm. The wall doesn’t get sick, need a day off or require health insurance. Once it is built it can’t be defunded, ordered to not patrol an area, turned off like warning systems, suffer power outages or ordered not to fly like drones and planes. If some administration in the future tries to tear it down, everyone will see what they are doing. It is easy to hide the other methods of not enforcing immigration policy from the public and the left-wing news media will never report it. If the public does find out, the left will simply bog the other methods down in endless debate and nothing will get done.
The panel reviewing the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida has just released a 407-page report containing several recommendations, one of which is arming teachers. Polk County Sheriff, Grady Judd, was on the panel and said the program for arming teachers needs to be expanded. Of course, the liberal Democrats went into a tizzy recommending bullet proof glass and metal detectors. The left typically makes such recommendations avoiding the real solutions. The real solution is to stop the would-be killer in his tracks immediately. I don’t care if they commit suicide, I don’t care why they did it or attempted to do it, get them off the planet and bury them in an unmarked grave. Their names should never be uttered again and any news media person who does utter the name should be charged as being an accomplice.
As I have mentioned many times before, the only people present at a crime scene are the criminal and the intended victim or victims. Stop waiting for someone else to save you because it won’t happen.
Fighting for gun owners’ rights in a state like Illinois is tough enough but it gets geometrically tougher when you have to fight an irredeemably corrupt place like Chicago. This is why gun owners have to unite and stay united. Join the Illinois State Rifle Association today. Whatever the outcome of this shenanigan, the ISRA will fight on.
Find Upcoming Events on ISRA
Calendar visit www.isra.org
As of 1/15/2019:
FOID – 2,266,389
ICCL – 322,833
The annual Illinois Gun Owner Lobby Day (IGOLD) is March 27th, 2019 in Springfield. See more info on event at: www.ISRA.org
