Lawmaker Asks IL House To Agree With Rauner On Gun Bill Changes

Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner this week added sweeping changes to a piece of gun legislation, in a move some state legislators called “political gamesmanship” and “unconstitutional.” But the lawmaker behind the original bill isn’t backing down, announcing Wednesday he's asking the Illinois House to agree with those changes.

Photo Credit: State Representative Jonathan Carroll's website

That lawmaker is State Representative Jonathan Carroll, a Democrat from Northbrook. He’s one of the newest state representatives in the Illinois House, and faces his first re-election bid this November.

His fateful bill, which would have required anyone buying an assault style weapon to wait three days before picking it up from the store, was one of his first legislative efforts. Governor Rauner just overhauled it with an amendatory veto, expanding it to include a 3 day wait for all guns, a bump stock ban, and a plan to bring back the death penalty for mass shootings and the killing of police.

Carroll says he didn’t know what Rauner had planned for the measure until it had already happened.

“You [Rauner] had it sitting on your desk for two plus months, and then at the last hour you basically add a lot of very powerful language to it," he said. "I wanna understand the process of how he got to this.”

Despite all of that, Carroll is asking the House to agree with those changes, saying he wants to keep the gun safety conversation going.

“All of a sudden, we go from one bill to several things. So, these are major issues that have been brought to the table, so, you know, let’s talk about ‘em.”

State lawmakers in the House now have two weeks to either accept Rauner’s changes or try to override.

Meanwhile, the Illinois Senate Wednesday approved two other gun measures, including a second attempt at state gun dealer licensing and a plan to close loopholes exposed in the case of the Tennessee Waffle House shooter.