Dems may approve ‘concealed carry’ to throw GOP a bone

• Reprints

Updated: April 15, 2011 9:26AM

I wouldn’t blame you if you thought things are moving way too fast at the Illinois Statehouse.

Civil unions, an income tax increase and then, Wednesday, the death penalty abolition law.

But change like this comes maybe once in a generation, if that. Things move at a glacier’s pace in Springfield. Until January, Illinois’ income tax rate hadn’t been increased in 22 years. And that increase came 20 years after the tax was first imposed.

Illinois was the first state to legalize sodomy between consenting adults, in 1961. Chicago outlawed discrimination against gays 26 years later. But Illinois’ anti-discrimination law wasn’t updated until 2005. And it took another six years to pass the civil unions law.

Twelve years ago, in 1999, Anthony Porter was a mere 48 hours away from being executed when he was found to be innocent of the crime he was alleged to have committed.

Gov. George Ryan’s spokesman initially said the system had “worked,” even though two other Death Row inmates had been exonerated just months before. But then Ryan stepped in and convened a summit. The following year, Ryan placed a moratorium on executions and commuted the sentences of all Death Row inmates to life in prison. That moratorium has stayed in place for 11 years.

I was a columnist for the old Daily Southtown back in 1999 and I wrote about the Porter case.

“Don’t kid yourself,” I cautioned, “that the death penalty will be abolished in this state any time soon. Passing bills in the Legislature is a numbers game. And the numbers just aren’t there for getting rid of capital punishment.”

Back then, public opinion overwhelmingly favored the death penalty. Support has dropped a lot since, but as of last year, 56 percent of Illinoisans still wanted to see Ryan’s moratorium lifted, according to a Paul Simon Public Policy Institute poll.

The way I explained things in that long-ago column was that legislators would never touch an “80 percenter.”

When 80 percent of voters oppose something, they are far more likely to base their vote on that one issue. Because opposition to the death penalty has since dropped far below that threshold, it became a bit easier to “do the right thing” without losing the next election.

And that’s why a “concealed carry” bill has a chance of passing in the next year or so. Downstate voters are far more conservative than those in the Chicago region. The death penalty is still supported by a big majority in that region. And lots more people oppose civil unions and tax increase than they do in the Chicago Sun-Times’ circulation area.

So, in order to chill out tons of very angry “80 percenters” and secure their legislative majorities, the General Assembly’s Chicago Democratic leadership may eventually have to swallow hard and pass a bill to allow some folks to carry concealed weapons.

Downstate Democratic legislators are screaming for the bill as a way to help them throw some much-needed red meat at their furious constituents.

Those three huge bills which were signed into law this year couldn’t have passed until after the election. Lots of “lame ducks” were used to pad the total, while others crossed their fingers and hoped voters would calm down before the next go-around. So the Democrats may choose to wait until after next year’s primary (their “real” election) to do something.

Governing is always a balancing act, and the scales have been tipped so far in one direction that another very large, “once-in-a-generation” law may have to be passed.