The IL Assault Weapon Ban, Pritzker, and a misconception

Note: For the TL;DR folks who just want to get to the discussion of IL's Assault Weapons Ban and Pritzker, look for the italicized line "Here comes the meat of the story" - that's your queue if you prefer to skip the flourish.. You heathens. I deserve a tip for that.

Ah, the gun range.. The place where I can exercise my abilities in the one sport I can still be competitive in despite my disability.

Also, the place where I really, really don't want to talk about politics with the locals, so I go as a "gray man".

A gray man is someone non-descript; they don't stand out in their environment, making them less of a target, and even less noticable in general.

Yesterday morning I donned a really comfortable cap I recieved from a client, my 5.11 Tactical t-shirt, jeans, shoes, and the inner portion of my battle belt. The reason for my attire?

It was time for a trip to the gun range.

It has been somewhere around 9-10 months since I was last able to hit the range; my broken body - and the weather - have conspired hard to keep me from something that helps me relax and feel good despite being broken.

Usually.

The first half of my trip was great; nobody was around, and I expended 100 rounds at the rifle range fighting variable winds and fucking nailing my shots at 300 yards with my 22LR rifle (although 400 yards was a non-starter, unsurprisingly - I hadn't even had a chance to DOPE this ammo out at that range).

Halfway through my rifle range visit, however, a new person arrived. They hopped over to the pistol range, which I was perfectly cool with.

To be honest, I'd be OK with them on the rifle range, too; I've made a few acquaintences doing ELR target shooting, which is one of those weird things we can bond over despite me typically being the sole leftist on each trip (how do I know? Read on, I'll tell you how I know).

Anyway, I had planned to test some ammo over at the pistol range next, and it was time, so I sucked it up, donned my battle belt, packed up my ELR gear and rifle, and went over to the pistol side of the range.

As I was loading my first magazines for the TX22C with Federal Premium Punch (verdict? I love this ammo, seriously - shoots exceptionally well, and my groups at 12-15 yards were fantastic), the newcomer approached me asking for some thoughts on his optic on his pistol (A Holosun 407k green dot, much like mine).

As an aside, before we get into the.. experience.. might you consider tossing some change in the tip jar to help my birthday not suck this year?

Anyway, it looked to me like maybe the battery had failed in it, we talked about it for a bit, and then we separated and I fired off 4 magazines worth of the good stuff, impressed at how tight my groups were given my recent peripheral neuropathy, pain, and extended time between range trips.

Jess called to confirm I'll be ready by noon, which I affirmed, and then I sat down to load 4 more magazines of CCI's Uppercut (the second ammo I wanted to test).. And if this wasn't foreshadowing some irony, I don't know what is.

That shooter with the failing optic? We got to talking again, and this time, about Illinois' Assault Weapons Ban.

Here comes the meat of the story.

The fun part about living in rural IL is you meet a lot of conservatives who hate IL. They hate Chicago, they hate Democrats, and they absolutely despise J.B. Pritzker, who to them is the devil incarnate.

Of course, most of this hate comes from being wildly misinformed about what's really happening in IL, what demographics actually show, and how state-level government - let alone the entire US government - works.

You see, Pritzker is the sole source of blame for the Assault Weapons Ban in IL, despite him not being the creator of it.

This guy said repeatedly "They call Trump a fascist, but what Pritzker is doing is really fascist".

Buddy, you keep using that word, and I don't think you know what that word means.

All over the internet, it's "Pritzker banned this", and "Pritzker banned that".. Although they're actually not using his name, because they like to insult folks based on their appearance rather than any actual meaningful characteristic tied to what they are angry about.

Folks literally believe Pritzker is the sole reason we have the Assault Weapons Ban in IL, and as a hardcore leftist who is against the ban (yes, that's right, and maybe I'll talk more about it later), I just have to shake my head and wonder how we got here.

For those of you who aren't aware: All Pritzker did was sign it into law.. Because he literally had to. Of course, he wanted to, but that's besides the point: The Assault Weapons ban made it through the IL general assembly with a veto-proof majority, which meant that bill was going into law no matter who was governor of IL.

Pritzker didn't write the bill. Illinois House & Senate members did.

The first bit of irony in this is the man I was talking to agreed on one point - folks should not be creating laws about things they literally don't understand. The regulations are haphazard at best, targeting things that make firearms seem scary, and making very little sense in general to those of us who understand firearms (and, as a disabled shooter, making it so I can't build an affordable semi-auto rifle that actually works with my grip limitations is pretty shitty).

In case you didn't see the irony, let me spell it out here: This guy was criticizing folks for not understanding what they were criticizing, when he himself doesn't understand what he's criticizing.

Just about every goddamned range trip I have to hear someone bitch about Pritzker, and you know what? Fuck off sir, this is a Wendy's.

I'm not the biggest fan of Pritzker, but he's a goddamned vision for IL in the broad sense and is doing great things for the state, aside from his support for the AWB.

Oh, right, there was a second bit of irony. Well, here it is:

Much like this guy's Holosun optic failing him on top of his general understanding of how government works, CCI's Uppercut was an abject failure in my TX22 Compact. Failures to feed, failures to extract, failures to fire.. Just a big series of fails over and over. I tried it through 3 out of 4 mags, and only managed to get 2 shots to go off in sequence without intervention.

I unloaded the 4th mag by hand at this point, said goodbye to the Pritzker-hater, and went back over to the rifle range to wait in relative piece for Jess to get there so we could go home.

Also:

Foxtrot Delta Tango.