Surveys, averages, and other statistics can be very misleading. They can be presented to make the unimportant seem important, and the important seem trivial. It all depends on how they are presented, and what claims are made based on the presenter's agenda.
The other important point is that correlation is NOT causation.
Indeed it is like "households with guns have more violence victimization" studies and assertions, none of which control for what portion are illegal guns owned by criminals, including active criminals. For all we know 95% of households with firearms are safer from violence than the average home with no firearms at all, and 5% that are muggers, fences, mini meth labs, drug dealers, gang members are the mire than the entire elevation of the mean of "gun owners."
Others of my favorites are:
"Australia murder fell by 45% since is 1990's peak, without not noting US murder fell by 55%from our 1990's peak.
"Gun ownership is falling and is 31% of households, mostly old white men, without noting the science says people increasingly are untruthful when it comes to polling on high confidentiality matters, or that modern gun ownership training emphasizes to tell no one, or that urban persons, minorities and younger persons are the most likely to not discuss gun ownership.
I am sure in the case the legislator in question is not saying most guns used in crime in Illinois come from Illinois, but from Indiana or Ohio. That is what I hear said.
the Op's retort to the blame shifting legislator ought to be two fold:
1) if lower gun control in Ohio and Indiana is the issue, why then do Ohio and Indiana themselves have lower gun murder and gun crime rates than Illinois?
2) why doesn't Illinois beef up its sentencing and actual time served for illegal possession and gun crime? Does the legislator support say Illinois doubling the penalties and having mandatory minimums for crimes committed with guns?
I'm in DC. Our trace data shows guns used in crime are more likely to come from Virginia than Maryland -- but violent crimes committed by persons from out of jurisdiction are an extremely high portion of perpetration, and repeat prior <I><b>criminals</b></I> committing violent crimes here are much more likely to be coming from Maryland than Virginia.
How about "trace data" on criminals as well as guns? maybe states with lower criminal sentencing guidelines, lower incarceration rates, and lower real time served need to subject to some kind blame by states with stronger criminal justice laws.
or dare we say accountability, and perhaps mandatory 'trace data" rested upon sanctuary jurisdictions? Our big mass murder in DC in the past couple of years, the prime suspect is a guy who was living in Maryland with a dozen arrests for about two dozen crimes, several of them felonies, many of them convictions, and on top of that an illegal living in a Maryland "sanctuary county." If he had been properly sentenced he would have been in jail until 2030 and the murders never committed, or if he had been ejected from the US on or after sentence served from his his first violent felony conviction-- that family he killed would still be alive.
) of all known mass murders in the US in the past century ate bread, or a bread product within 30 days of committing murder!!!