* The NRA’s Todd Vandermyde wants his group’s supporters to retaliate against Chicago over concealed carry. Vandermyde made his demand in a column about last week’s House floor debate on the issue…

During the debate on the carry amendments we saw Colleges and others try to make it impossible to carry in public, but then, we also saw 68 (there were 67 votes with one of our good guys out for a medical reason) votes for our shall issue, preemptive carry amendment. That sent shock waves through the building as the City of Chicago has now gone into panic mode as we are now 3 votes shy of a super majority to pass a bill. And those votes are out there.

That vote was significant. The City is already trying to intimidate some of the votes that showed up on the bill. And now it is time for us to go into overdrive. Any bill that is a legislative initiative of the City of Chicago, we should oppose. And any downstate or suburban rep that supports us should vote “Present” on all the City bills going forward. They want more red light cameras? Vote “no.” They want special treatment to do X or Y? Vote “no” or “present” and leave them with their 35 votes that are not a majority in the House, nor enough to pass ANY bill.

*** UPDATE *** You may have noticed that the Illinois Review link is now broken. The cached version is here.

Vandermyde was upset that IR used a column he posted to another website as if it was its own. His e-mail to IL Review…

I wrote the update on the Carry bill for Illinis Carry. Not for Illinois review.

You make it appear as if I worte it for a column for You for your publication. I did not and ask that you take it down.

Further more I see no attribution to where I posted it, and I only posted it in what should be the members section of Illinois Carry.

Your copy and paste style of reporting is missleading and I ask that you take it down. it was not intended for your site nor is it fair use.

You stole my comments for use on your website, as if I am some participant in your efforts of Illinois review — I am not.

[ *** End Of Update *** ]

* Meanwhile, here’s my syndicated newspaper column…

Nobody ever really knows what’s going through Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s head except for Madigan himself.

So, the actual purpose of two highly choreographed gun control and pension reform debates last week ordered up by Madigan weren’t completely clear to anyone.

That’s by design, of course. Madigan (D-Chicago) prefers to keep people in the dark until he’s ready to make his final move.

But I did hear one theory from a Democrat last week that made quite a bit of sense, at least for a while.

Last Tuesday’s hours-long debate on numerous aspects of concealed carry that ended with far more discombobulated confusion than a clear resolution may have been intended to inject some chaos into the equation and convince members that what’s needed is some real leadership forward. And that leadership, of course, would come from Madigan.

If nothing else, that debate gave House members a good education about how far apart the two sides on gun control are regarding concealed carry.

In the most infamous example, state Rep. Jim Sacia (R-Pecatonica) used a way-over-the-top analogy to explain to Chicagoans why their gun violence problem shouldn’t cause them to “blame the rest of us” by forcing everyone to disarm.

Sacia’s analogy — “You folks in Chicago want me to get castrated because your families are having too many kids” — enraged several Chicago-area legislators but did serve a purpose.

Thanks to Sacia, Chicagoans discovered the intensity and breadth of the divide. And it even helped that Sacia inadvertently confirmed all those liberal pop psychology theories about how, um, “overly enthusiastic” gun owners associate their weapons with their private parts and aren’t all that fond of poor people.

And liberal proponents of super-tight restrictions on concealed carry made it shockingly clear to conservatives that some Chicagoans feel more in danger being around folks (like those very conservatives) who are vetted and licensed to carry concealed weapons in public than they are around dangerous criminals.

The only way to bridge this huge divide on gun control is through strong leadership from above, or at least that’s the theory.

But just two days after that long day of gun debates, the wheels seemed to fall off.

If anybody else’s proposal had been shot down in the House by a vote of 66-1, with only the sponsor voting for it and all Republicans taking a pass because it was so “out there,” the ridicule would have been piled high on the sponsor.

And if that same sponsor saw all of his other proposals die a similar fate on the same day — with one getting just two votes, another getting three and another getting five — well, the sponsor probably would have been considered a rank amateur.

But that’s exactly what happened Thursday to Madigan, the supposed master of three-dimensional political chess.

Apparently sending a political message, Madigan ran four pension reform amendments that were so radioactively harsh that nobody wanted to go near them. Instead of prompting a debate, few rose to speak. Instead of putting the Republicans on the spot, they refused to cast any votes.

Instead of getting members to think about the serious pension-funding problem, Madigan gave them an easy out via a cartoonish charade. Instead of convincing them that his leadership was needed, they rejected his ideas out of hand.

And the speaker’s heavy-handed, top-down management will undoubtedly continue.

Madigan’s spokesman told reporters last week that a request by state Rep. Jack Franks (D-Woodstock) for a special committee to take testimony and openly debate pension reform was the “craziest idea” because the House has held numerous committee hearings, only to see the Republicans withdraw bills and duck votes.

Back in the day, before former House Speaker Lee Daniels changed the rules, members could file amendments that went straight to the floor without first having to be approved by a committee. The process was sometimes abused, but members had infinitely more input into issues than they do now.

Was state government somehow worse back then? Hardly. So, why not let ’em have their say?

It probably won’t work, though. Even back in the “good old days,” big, important and complicated issues were almost always worked out behind closed doors.

But if and when a real debate with truly open rules on amendments fails, then members will come running back to Daddy Madigan for instructions as they always do. And in the unlikely prospect that it works, then maybe Madigan could learn something as well.

* And NBC5 takes a look at Rep. Sacia’s “facts”…

In fact, the Chicago metropolitan area only has the sixth highest birth rate in Illinois, with 51 babies per 1,000 females between 15 and 50. Even if Sacia was trying to single out African-Americans, his analogy falls apart, because the nationwide black birthrate is 61.7 — lower than the whites of Southern Illinois.

Here are the top five:

Marion-Herrin 64
Danville 57
Decatur 56
Rockford 54
Galesburg 52

If we have an overpopulation problem in Illinois, it’s the men in the southern part of the state who need to regulated, not the men in Chicago.