When the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in December that Illinois' outright ban of defensive firearm carry (whether concealed or openly) violates the Second Amendment, giving the state until June 9 to come up with some kind of carry law, St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner predicted the fight was far from over. That was probably an understatement.
Since then, Illinois State Attorney General Lisa Madigan appealed the 7th Circuit Court's decision, requesting a second, en banc, hearing before the entire court. Her request was denied, and Chicago-area Democrats have been scrambling to force through an ultra-restrictive bill that would (Madigan and the rest of the anti-self-defense fanatics hope) meet the letter of the 7th Circuit's requirement for a carry law, but would in effect be the next "best" thing to the current outright ban. So far, those attempts have been defeated, but they keep coming.
Meanwhile, despite the court's unambiguous ruling that Illinois' ban of defensive firearm carry is unconstitutional, people arrested for defying that ban are not being acquitted, and the unconstitutional law is still being enforced.
In mid-March, rabidly anti-gun Illinois Governor Pat Quinn urged Madigan to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court. Madigan appeared at the time reluctant to take that step, clearly hoping that the Illinois legislature would succeed in passing a carry bill so restrictive as to be, in effect, a continuation of the current ban. This, she apparently believed, was safer than a Supreme Court appeal, which the Court may have refused to hear (or the appeal could be heard, and still lose).
In mid-April, the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to New York's extremely restrictive "may issue" concealed carry law (which amounts to "shall not issue," except to the wealthy, the famous, and the connected). Madigan then claimed that this was the Court's way of tacitly approving restrictive "may issue" laws, and that Illinois legislators should now rest assured that such laws are Constitutional, so, in effect, "Get busy passing such a law."
At about the same time, the Illinois House voted on a bill, drafted by pro-gun Representative Brandon Phelps (D), that although "shall issue," was otherwise extremely generous to the anti-gun crowd, in terms of the restrictions, extortionary fees, extensive training requirements, etc., it would require, as a concession to the gun-haters. Some would say those concessions were far too generous (an assertion that will find no disagreement here). Still, the state's pro-gun House members voted for it, and it still failed.
In other words, with less than three months before Illinois' carry ban is to simply disappear, with no alternative regulatory framework in place, the anti-gunners could not bring themselves to vote for what would almost certainly have been the most restrictive "shall issue" carry law in the nation. It's as if the anti-gunners are deliberately surrendering their power to regulate defensive firearm carry at all.
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