Don Gwinn
Moderator Emeritus
44Brent, do you have time to read the answers to those questions? It may get involved. 
First, your numbered questions:
1. Hell, no. There's no organized anything in Illinois RKBA circles, which is why we get our butts kicked with such alarming regularity and punctuality. The ISRA doesn't care about anything except building highpower and shotgun ranges. The CCRA and ConcealCarry Inc., while much more dedicated to CCW and similar issues than the ISRA, are tiny, underfunded, under-organized, and too often care more about getting back at the ISRA than they do making progress against our enemies. The NRA's Illinois lobbyist moonlights for another organization (ABATE) whose best friend in the legislature (and thus Vandermyde's best buddy in the legislature) is the very anti-gun Lane Evans.
2. Don't know, but I doubt anyone with the power to get much done has ever bothered to ask. In my personal opinion, we need to organize before we do ANYTHING else. We're going to have to accept that it's going to be 5-10 years or more before we get CCW, if ever, and turn our attention to organizing so that we can make it happen. We keep trying to get CCW with six organizations who all hate each other and hamstring each other, and we're screwed. Ten years will still pass, but we'll be right where we are now.
Don't believe me when I say you should expect a ten-year battle from the day you really get serious about CCW? Ask John Ross how long he's been in it since getting really, truly serious about the fight. We haven't gotten really serious in Illinois yet, as a whole, so add however long you think it'll take before we stop bickering like three-year-olds.
VanDerMyde was never serious about that bill, as far as anyone knows. He probably traded it to the few anti-gun legislators who took it seriously for some favor he'd been wanting for awhile. That bill was, at least in the opinion of many observers, submitted because the ISRA was in the middle of a board election in which the "Vision Team" candidates threatened to take over the ISRA and turn it into a fierce pro-carry group. The ISRA board then in place had to do something to look like they were hard at work on CCW. That was the same time that they formed the "Collar Counties Grassroots" groups, which were supposed to show that they were serious about fighting a real battle to win hearts and minds in Chicago. Of course, after the election those orgs died on the vine and no further attention was paid to them.
CCRA did submit a CCW bill, called the "Safe Families Act" because it was introduced around the period that the so-called "Safe Neighborhoods Act" was a big deal. It was a good bill, and CCRA took it very seriously, but again, they're tiny and practically unfunded. Besides, the ISRA had a vested interest in keeping the CCRA from getting any kind of win at all because they consider this a zero-sum game.
We're still experiencing fallout from hurt feelings and jealousy issues ten years old and more. Before any real progress can be made, we have to get more Illinois gun owners involved in actual RKBA work. Proselytizing, showing by example what kind of people "gun nuts" are, building organizations that can exert real pressure on politicians. They're going to have to be strong and committed enough to go through a bunch of failures, some of them devastating, without falling apart.
First, your numbered questions:
1. Hell, no. There's no organized anything in Illinois RKBA circles, which is why we get our butts kicked with such alarming regularity and punctuality. The ISRA doesn't care about anything except building highpower and shotgun ranges. The CCRA and ConcealCarry Inc., while much more dedicated to CCW and similar issues than the ISRA, are tiny, underfunded, under-organized, and too often care more about getting back at the ISRA than they do making progress against our enemies. The NRA's Illinois lobbyist moonlights for another organization (ABATE) whose best friend in the legislature (and thus Vandermyde's best buddy in the legislature) is the very anti-gun Lane Evans.
2. Don't know, but I doubt anyone with the power to get much done has ever bothered to ask. In my personal opinion, we need to organize before we do ANYTHING else. We're going to have to accept that it's going to be 5-10 years or more before we get CCW, if ever, and turn our attention to organizing so that we can make it happen. We keep trying to get CCW with six organizations who all hate each other and hamstring each other, and we're screwed. Ten years will still pass, but we'll be right where we are now.
Don't believe me when I say you should expect a ten-year battle from the day you really get serious about CCW? Ask John Ross how long he's been in it since getting really, truly serious about the fight. We haven't gotten really serious in Illinois yet, as a whole, so add however long you think it'll take before we stop bickering like three-year-olds.
VanDerMyde was never serious about that bill, as far as anyone knows. He probably traded it to the few anti-gun legislators who took it seriously for some favor he'd been wanting for awhile. That bill was, at least in the opinion of many observers, submitted because the ISRA was in the middle of a board election in which the "Vision Team" candidates threatened to take over the ISRA and turn it into a fierce pro-carry group. The ISRA board then in place had to do something to look like they were hard at work on CCW. That was the same time that they formed the "Collar Counties Grassroots" groups, which were supposed to show that they were serious about fighting a real battle to win hearts and minds in Chicago. Of course, after the election those orgs died on the vine and no further attention was paid to them.
CCRA did submit a CCW bill, called the "Safe Families Act" because it was introduced around the period that the so-called "Safe Neighborhoods Act" was a big deal. It was a good bill, and CCRA took it very seriously, but again, they're tiny and practically unfunded. Besides, the ISRA had a vested interest in keeping the CCRA from getting any kind of win at all because they consider this a zero-sum game.
We're still experiencing fallout from hurt feelings and jealousy issues ten years old and more. Before any real progress can be made, we have to get more Illinois gun owners involved in actual RKBA work. Proselytizing, showing by example what kind of people "gun nuts" are, building organizations that can exert real pressure on politicians. They're going to have to be strong and committed enough to go through a bunch of failures, some of them devastating, without falling apart.