I-GOLD 2012 March

I wish gun owners in Pennsylvania could get this fired up:

I dare say, we can probably thank Mayor Rahm for the success of this year’s Illinois Gun Owners Action Day. It must pain our opponents on this issue to see the pro-gun-rights side make such an effective use of their own tactics.

I think a big difference is that I-GOLD is organized by the grassroots. The Pennsylvania event has always struck me as a political rally. It’s not a bad idea, but the politicians need to be reminded of who we expect them to serve. Not the other way around.

13 thoughts on “I-GOLD 2012 March”

  1. That picture doesn’t do the march justice. We probably had close to 10,000 this year, up from around 8,000 last year.

    The person who deserves most of the credit for IGOLD is Valinda Rowe, IllinoisCarry.com spokesperson. When and her husband, Mike, proposed that the ISRA transform their annual Lobby Day (that had 50 to 200 at the most) into a multi-organizational event, the first IGOLD was born in 2007. Since then she and others have worked tirelessly on IGOLD and regional town hall meetings to educate Illinois residents about gun rights and right-to-carry in particular.

    Estimated IGOLD attendance by year:
    2007 – 1200
    2008 – 2500
    2009 – 5000
    2010 – 7500
    2011 – 8000
    2012 – 10000

  2. There is quite a huge difference in the PA gun model and the Illinois one. I think if there were HUGE issues at stake, we could turn out 10,000. Illinois has not State gun mention in their constitution, so to compare then isn’t really fair.

    But, I sure would love to roll up on Harrisburg and have the legislators see 10,000 gun friendly folks, all taking a day off work, to lobby for more freedoms!

  3. Article 22: Subject to the Police Power, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

    Seems like as strong an RKBA as any.

    1. Seems like as strong an RKBA as any.

      On opposite day, perhaps.

      Let’s change the wording:

      Article 22: The right of the individual citizen to keep and bear arms shall only be infringed by the State Police (Police State?).

      It’s pretty clear where the people and the police are in the hierarchy. Further scrolling through the Illinois constitution, it looks like a statist’s paradise:

      SECTION 2. POWERS OF GOVERNMENT
      The enumeration in this Constitution of specified powers and functions shall not be construed as a limitation of powers of state government.

      You don’t have rights, just the use of powers that the state hasn’t claimed yet.

      The whole sad thing is here:
      http://www.ilga.gov/commission/lrb/conent.htm

  4. You are reading Section 2 incorrectly. “The enumeration in this Constitution of specified powers and functions shall not be construed as a limitation of powers of state government” does not override Article 22 or any of the other personal right guarantees.

    Heller, McDonald, and every other 2A ruling by the courts recognizes that the states have police power. Ditto over our other rights. However, the scope of that police power is limited. We are in the process right now of defining the limits of the scope of police powers applied to the 2A. After 150 years, the courts are still doing that with respect to the 1A.

    1. I didn’t say that Section 2 overrides Article 22. It doesn’t have to, since Article 22 makes it pretty clear that the right to keep and bear arms SHALL be infringed by the state. I’m no scholar of the Illinois Constitution, but that’s what it says.

      You seem to be saying that Heller/McDonald should keep Article 22 in check, which I’d agree with. But hoping to redefine Article 22 after SC rulings isn’t the same as it being “strong RKBA” to begin with. As it’s written, it’s actually the opposite of strong RKBA. They might as well have added “at the whim of the state” in there.

  5. The “Subject to the Police Powers” preamble is vapor. It’s like saying “Because the sky is blue…”. All rights are subject to the police power, or there’s no point in forming a government.

    Even the right to life, is subject to the police power, else we’d not be able to impose the death sentence. 4th and 5th Amendment rights to privacy, property, etc are subject to the police power, else we’d not be able to obtain search warrants, make arrests, and detain wrong-doers.

    1st Amendment rights are also subject to the police powers. Time/place/manner restrictions make sure that some idiot with a bullhorn can’t stand on the sidewalk in front of your house at 3am blathering inanities.

  6. I know I beat the hell out of this ancient history, but it WAS a learning experience:

    I’ll opening by asking, were there any hopeful candidates, or crowds of their henchmen working the rally?

    This rally reminds me of the “gun rights” rally we had in PA on June 14, 1994. That also had 8,000 – 10,000 people present.

    Admittedly, we had just had a close call with a Republican sponsored “assault weapon” ban barely six months earlier, but IMO what fueled the unprecedented turnout was that it was facilitated by the state Republican Party to get a big turnout for what would turn out to be as much a Santorum (running for U.S. Senate) rally as a gun rights rally. A local Republican committeeman or pol dropping a word in our gun club president’s ear, that it would be a good idea for the club to support the rally, carried a lot more weight than if I (or anyone) alone had been suggesting it. So, the club sponsored a couple buses, where otherwise maybe two or three cars would have gone.

  7. I recall that Pa. rally back in 1994 was bipartisan. Pa. is not cleanly split between pro-gun Repubs. and anti-gun Dems.
    I was one of a bunch of organizers and that giant turnout gave the pols the courage to beat back the push to ban “assault weapons” (the State Police had even defined .25 cal. pistols as assault weapons!) and really drove a stake through the heart of Pa. gun grabbers that sits there to this day.
    After that we had considerable positive legislation (i.e shall issue in Philadelphia) and repulsed all attempts to backslide.
    Obviously there was more to it than that, but this is a blog post.

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