I think Illinois is a liberal state much like New York and Mass, right?
More like New York I'd think than Massachusetts, in that it's a largely rural and more or less conservative state whose politics are unfortunately dominated by one very large, very liberal city/metro area.
Up and down State Street, I remember going into the stores and seeing the goodies. Woolworth's actually had a gunsmith on site--I saw in the rifle racks some really nice custom Weatherby rifles, and one that stuck me as being impossibly long. That was (I now recognize) an 8mm Mauser.
Sears, Roebuck and Co. had to my young eyes the ultimate rifle--an M1 carbine that I wanted badly.
Montgomery Ward's had the complete line of Winchester semiautomatic .22's.
Look at the city now! Look at the suburbs! Look at the STATE!
This is not entirely the fault of "the Machine" as you put it...a large part of this change also seems to have been brought on by a slowly changing culture. Because this change is occurring outside Chicago and Illinois (and outside New York and Massachusetts as well). Even where guns are less regulated, you hardly see M1 carbines at the local Sears; that's limited to sporting good stores and gun shops.
Use your best and most powerful weapon--the vote!
Indeed. And call your local reps and make sure they know darn well how you feel. I feel like a broken record, but I've not recommended against any of this. I think this needs to be stopped, too.
My point is that your representatives will take you much more seriously if you
know what you are talking about. Sure, the evil liberals of Chicago might want to classify every deer rifle as a sniper rifle and ban it;
but that's not what this law is doing. This law won't even (in theory) confiscate your AR-15. So if you call your rep claiming that it will, he will probably dismiss you as some fringe wingnut wackjob.
I mean seriously, I'll quote it again from the ISRA website:
IF YOU DO NOT ACT NOW, YOU MAY HAVE NO GUNS LEFT BY THE 4TH OF JULY
Caps and "these amps go to 11" rhetoric theirs, of course. So it's March (well, this was written in February). So they're suggesting that in five months' time the Illinois state government will manage to ban all guns? I suppose that
may happen. I
may have a piano fall on my head as I walk down the street as well.
It's overblown rhetoric with little relation to the truth like this that pushes far too many gun owners to the fringes of the debate; and you'll never pick up anybody from the fringes. Especially not the majority of moderate folks who are largely undecided on firearms and really don't much care that you need to pick up. You'll just sit there on the fringe, complaining about them taking your scary black guns and talking about what you'll do when the SHTF all the while watching your second amendment rights get taken away because people who
actually could have been brought to your side instead looked at illogical and overblown rhetoric like this and went
.
