On February 28th, I was very excited to pass House Bill 1468, creating a 72-hour waiting period for assault weapon sales in Illinois. I am pleased to announce it passed the House with overwhelming, bipartisan support. It was my first bill in Springfield, and after passing the Senate, it landed on Governor Bruce Rauner’s desk on March 14th.
Last Monday, the 17th of May, Governor Rauner decided to do an amendatory veto on my bill with a variety of changes including expanding the 72-hour waiting period to all guns, banning bump-stocks and trigger cranks, violence order of protections for gun owners, funding for resource officers in schools, transparency in sentencing and the death penalty.
I am not writing this to get into my feelings on these issues, but simply to discuss the Governor’s actions. I am a member of the Public Safety Working Group that was created by Governor Rauner, but almost all of what he’s proposing was never discussed by the group. As the bill’s sponsor, the Governor didn’t reach out to me at any point to discuss his actions. This was not the result of our cooperative effort, this was a hijacking of good legislation for the Governor’s political gain.
Since coming to Springfield last October, I’ve made it a core aspect of my mission to work with everyone. My door is always open, and I’m enjoying strong relationships with both sides of the aisle. If there’s a way to make our state a better place, I’m all for it. What the Governor did, quite frankly, was wrong. I should have been contacted about his intentions; instead, I found out about his amendatory veto by watching his press conference on television, same as everyone else.
Unlike our Governor, we’re giving his proposals a fair hearing this week. I believe in the process. I believe that we need to discuss hard issues and let democracy work. The Governor chose to disregard the actions of our bipartisan working group, and essentially threw our hard work in our faces. He put politics over policy, which I believe is the exact opposite intention of why we are elected to office. I will keep standing up for the people of the 57th District, and I will work tirelessly with my colleagues to pass the common sense gun reform laws that will keep my constituents, and the people of Illinois safe.
