Good News for Gun Owners

Lisa Madigan loses....and loses big:

• Gun owners’ identities would remain shielded from public disclosure under legislation the Senate overwhelmingly approved Friday and that Gov. Quinn signaled he would support.

  The 42-1 vote for a bill now headed to the governor’s desk represents a victory for gun-rights lobbyists who sought to keep the owners’ names private after Attorney General Lisa Madigan contended that lists of those with Firearm Owner Identification cards should be made public under the state’s open-records law.

• The House passed the bill in April with a 98-12 vote. It now heads to Quinn, who could either sign or veto it, though he signaled his support for the bill during a Friday press conference in Chicago.

  “We had the position with State Police that that was information that was confidential and should not be shared,” Quinn said. “I agreed with the State Police’s position, and we’ll see what the bill says.”

Rarely has a politician been so obviously on the wrong side of an issue and Madigan's anti-gun owner biases pushed her so far left that she even alienated the normally liberal Illinois legislature into acting centrist, even conservative for a moment.