Illinois:

Derek Howald of Chillicothe has had his Utah permit for four years. It’s reciprocal (that means it’s a valid permit) in 29 other states.

In Illinois, it’s worthless.

“It’s sad,” Howald said. “I think with the rich heritage of hunting and fishing, especially when you get to central and downstate … you have very pro-Second Amendment people here.”

The divisive statewide issue of concealed carry has gained a lot of attention in the Peoria area in recent weeks after Mayor Jim Ardis said he wants to see Peoria serve as a pilot city for some sort of responsible state law.

Illinois and Wisconsin are the only two states with no form of concealed carry available to regular citizens.

Also, the understatement of the day:

Struggles to get any kind of concealed carry measure adopted in Illinois hits a roadblock every legislative session in Springfield, where the battle over gun rights often boils down to geography.

Downstate lawmakers of both parties tend to oppose gun control, while officials in Chicago tend to support it.

I’m not sure how a “test city” case would work. It seems to me that it would as tough (or maybe even tougher) to get something like that passed than it would be to pass concealed carry for the entire state.

Still, there’s such a huge gap between the sensibilities of Chicago-area politicians and the rest of the state that it might be the only hope at this point. Maybe we’ll see that efforts to get a limited-area approved fail but fire up enough Illinois voters to bring the thing to a vote on the state level. We can only hope.

UPDATE: Say Uncle points out Many Chicagoans Carry Handguns Illegally.

Which is, as he points out, unpossible.

Tags: IL

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 14th, 2009 at 10:59 am and is filed under CCW, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.