Illinois does not allow concealed carry.
All residents wishing to purchase weapons or ammunition must possess an id issued by the state, called a FOID card, Firearms Owner Identification Card.
The Chicago area Democrats are virulently anti-gun and hold most of the control of the state legislature, thus prohibiting any concealed carry bills to advance.

How are going in terms of examples of shooting sprees taking place *outside* of a gun free zones,

Pretty well, actually.

OK Kilo, have fun - http://www.claytoncramer.com/gundefenseblog/

Thousands of stories for you. Thousands.

Of course, it’s kind of hard to point to mass shootings since, well, when you kill the bad guy he can’t continue his spree.

Second, you kind of prove your own point. Places that it is known that the populace will be armed are not generally chosen by those wanting to go out in a blaze of glory. You don’t see mass shootings at police stations, gun shows, NRA conventions or Gun Stores because the sheer number of other people who are armed acts as a deterrent.

These bastards who do these things aren’t completely crazy. They think about their targets and pick them quite carefully. Occasionally you’ll get the nutty idiot who goes completely bonkers and shoots randomly but those tend to either get shot quickly themselves therefore preventing mass anything.

For every mass murder you read about, hundreds of thousands of defense with a fire arm happen that you never hear about. Most of these happen without firing a shot (I know, I’ve had to defend my own life before) and get dropped off the radar because it’s not sensational.

I’m finding myself awfully irritated with the rampant displays of willful stupidity that lefty imbeciles have been smearing across my blog of late.

Could it be time to break out a really old bottle of Scotch?

OK Kilo, have fun - http://www.claytoncramer.com/gundefenseblog/

Thousands of stories for you. Thousands.

Thanks for that resource. I hadn’t come across it before.

The link provided in the original takes me to a directory listing of the various pages of the blog. This link takes you to the front page of the blog.

As long as you maintain a modicum of civility, you’re welcome here. Starting a post with “He’s your chimp” is not a good way to endear yourself on a blog that has loudly and openly pointed out Bush shortcomings (from a libertarian and conservative point of view) for nearly six years, nor is it an approach designed to encourage a civil response from me, of all people.

However, I, and most of the others here, don’t mind a decent argument.

Now, as to the above: It is often a conservative article of faith that publicity fuels these lunatics, but I’m dubious: I’m pretty sure that all of them know they are going to end up dead and, in fact, I believe that most of them regard their deed as an extended act of suicide. “Press kits” I would suspect are intended more as an act of explanation: “Here’s why I killed myself, you dirty bastards” than as an act of publicity which the killer knows he won’t ever get a chance to enjoy.

Is an armed society a solution?

Well, it certainly isn’t the problem. Although figures are harder to come by than I would like, statistics seem to indicate there is a fair amount of truth in the notion,
“more guns, less crime.” And the caveat about the Swiss is not really relevant: the point remains that the Swiss, in general, are a heavily armed society, no matter what controls they place on the weapons society is armed with.

There is a fair amount of evidence indicating that homicidal violence is to some extent cultural, by the way. You could probably put a full-auto AR-15 into every home in Japan, and their homicide rate wouldn’t move very much.

Now, you do say something I find interesting and indicative. It used to be that the left, in particular, would flatly say that gun confiscation would solve everything. Some still say that, but now, many are saying, “Well, we just don’t know what the solution is.”

This in the face of what seems to me common sense as well as growing evidence in support of the “more guns less crime” thesis.

The common sense aspect is highlighted by these massacres in “gun-free” zones. The theory is that guns are banned, therefore there should be no guns. You - accurately - point out that banning guns in, say, D.C., does little good if guns are available in Virginia. (Although have you ever tried to drive to another state and buy a firearm? I have - and I’ve been asked for proof of state residency every time). But the larger point is valid: bans don’t work unless they actually ban firearms, that is, make it impossible for anybody to get firearms at all.

But that is, in itself, impossible. Even in a tyranny like the former Soviet Union, there was substantial illegal gun ownership - the minions of the state itself did a thriving black market business in illegal firearms. (I’m looking for a reliable cite on this - working from memory at the moment).

So we are left with…what? Either we try to impose a Japan-style police state to ban and confiscate the several hundred million firearms already in private hands (and destroy America in the process) or admit that gun control, per se, is not workable in the US, and consider other alternatives. Given the possibility that the “more guns, less crime” thesis is actually more successful than the alternative in lowering crime, maybe we should give that a chance? Especially since our own constitution plainly guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms.

As for the supposed slaughter in the streets that would ensue? And all the screeching about “drunken college students running amok” (in relation to the notion of giving students the ability to bear arms) it won’t happen. It hasn’t happened. Everywhere the ability to exercise the right to bear arms has been expanded, the nightmares predicted by gun control advocates have not occurred.

And, in fact, I grew up in an era where I, as a thirteen year old boy, used to hoist up my loaded .22 and go off into the woods with my buddies and their squirrel rifles, (and no adults around) and plink at targets, squirrels, and birds. Nobody ran amok, and gun violence was considerably lower than it is today.

It has become so obvious that gun control laws are only obeyed by the law abiding, and ignored by those very persons whose actions such laws are designed to control, that the conclusion that these laws only strip the law-abiding of the ability to protect themselves against the non-law abiding becomes impossible to avoid, and one wonders why anyone of reasonable intellectual facility or social goodwill would support them.

The answer is that the urge to ban firearms is not rational, is not supported by the facts on the ground, and is, in its entirely, based on wishful thinking and utopian fantasy. It doesn’t work. Let’s junk it, and enforce the plain meaning of the Second Amendment instead.

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

I agree that my first comment was pretty obnoxious, and was more of a drive-by snark. It’s very easy to make assumptions in our “Crossfire / Hanniy and Colmes” culture about a person’s political beliefs.

I’m a Democrat. I’m not ashamed of that. But, I don’t follow the party plank any more then you do for the RNC.

Again, thanks for giving me the forum to express my views, even if you don’t agree with them.