A gun control PAC takes aim at a gun control legislator

Does this Gun Violence Prevention PAC ad really describe Stoneback?

If Ill. State Rep. Denyse Wang Stoneback, D-16, loses her primary race Tuesday, it will likely be because of her friends.

Well, kind of. They might not be her friends anymore.

You might think Stoneback would be a cinch in the district, which now covers most of Skokie, and parts of Lincolnwood, Niles, Morton Grove and Chicago’s 50th and 40th wards. Her principal cause is gun control, and she’s apparently good at it. And this spring, gun control is back in political fashion after various slaughters captured our attention.

For many, Stoneback first hit the public eye in 2015 as she sued the Village of Niles into reversing approval for a fancy gun store and gun range near Niles West High School, which would have been Illinois' biggest. She had already founded People for a Safer Society, an Illinois nonprofit struggling against gun violence in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.

While some freshman state reps stay busy just figuring out where the washrooms are, one-termer Stoneback has sponsored a handful of bills and gotten them passed. At least two are gun control and domestic violence-prevention laws.

But the Illinois Gun Violence Prevention Political Action Committee, G-PAC, one of the more muscular endorsing groups in the Illinois gun control community, is no longer a fan.

It has joined her primary opponent, Kevin Olickal, in slapping her around with fliers and TV ads.

“Our very own State Rep. Denyse Wang Stoneback SAID NO to universal background checks on gun purchases.”

“Why did Denyse Wang Stoneback tell grieving mothers NO to supporting universal background checks on gun purchases. Because for politicians like Denyse Wang Stoneback it’s my way or the highway.”

G-PAC ads notwithstanding, Stoneback is indeed a proponent of universal background checks.

Though she was successful in passing gun control bills in her two years in the General Assembly, HB1091 is the one that got away. It was designed as a FOID-fix bill, to make it harder for gents like the guy who shot a dozen people at an Aurora factory in 2019 to get strapped. 

The Firearm Owner’s Identification Card of Gary Montez Martin, 45, had been revoked because of his police record before he killed five people.  He wasn’t supposed to have even gotten the card in the first place because he had done some felonious stuff in Mississippi. That was discovered when he applied for an Illinois concealed carry permit and agreed to a fingerprint check, which isn’t required, but gets you the carry chip faster.

That hurry seems pretty stupid of him, but I guess he really wanted to speed up his opportunities to kill people.

When the cops found out he was a bad guy, they kindly asked him to turn in the gun he had bought on the strength of the FOID card he shouldn’t have had. 

No, thank you.

The cops didn’t go to his house to fetch it. So he was free to use it.

HB1091, if law three years ago, might have compelled the cops to get the gun before Martin started shooting his former co-workers with it. And it would also have required he submit to fingerprinting when he got the FOID card. So he would have never gotten the card, nor the gun, at least legally.

HB1091 passed the state house in the spring of 2021 but never got farther. Another similar, competing bill, HB562, pushed by One Aim, the advocacy arm of G-PAC, was passed instead. 

That bill, HB562, which included voluntary fingerprinting instead of HB1091’s mandatory fingerprinting, never got Stoneback’s vote or support. But it got enough in the Senate to become law in February. 

The Illinois Senate is less pro-gun-control than the House. Senators have to  worry a little more about the opinions of fine guys like Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association.

In June, 2017, Pearson wrote on the ISRA website, “Yesterday, Wednesday, June 16, HB562 passed the Illinois House 75-40-1. The ISRA was neutral on this bill. There were two bills in the General Assembly, HB562 and HB1091. HB562 wasn’t perfect, nothing in the General Assembly ever is. HB1091 was absolutely terrible.

 … Gun owners have to hear the truth and the truth is we were going to get one of these bills. … If you listened to Denyse Wang Stoneback in the Judiciary Committee hearing, she told everyone where the anti-gunners want to go, which includes mandatory fingerprints for FOID cards, increased fees on FOID cards, and only be able to apply for a FOID card at a police station. HB 1091 gave the anti-gun side two out of their three goals. HB1091 had to be stopped. HB562 stopped HB1091.”

G-PAC liked HB562, too. “As gun violence reached historic levels in Illinois, State Rep. Wang Stoneback failed her constituents by not voting for legislation that would have helped reduce the number of illegal guns in our state,” Kathleen Sances, President and CEO of G-PAC, said in a statement. “She turned her back on the people that elected her by not supporting life-saving universal background checks, fingerprinting for gun license applications, and mental health and trauma support funding for survivors. While legislation around firearms is always viewed as controversial, this measure was supported by both democrats and republicans, gun violence survivors, law enforcement and community organizations across Illinois. In short, Rep. Wang Stoneback failed to keep our children, families, and communities safe from illegal guns that have led to an increase in violence - we deserve better.”

“It was a weaker bill,” Stoneback said of HB562. “It is very laborious and dangerous, to revoke, to dispossess, a FOID card after the fact.”

It’s much easier to never give a FOID card to the wrong guy in the first place.

G-PAC’s legislator rating for Stoneback dropped to a “C.” The organization backed Olickal, and its local reps at the national Gabby Giffords and Brady gun control groups reportedly swung their endorsements for him, too.

Stoneback retained a lot of local gun-control action groups, but none that buy fliers.

Some Illinois Senate bigshots have taken sides, including the local senator, Ram Villivillam, D-8, for Olickal, and Senate President Chris Welch, D-7, for Stoneback.

The main evidence of Welch’s support is his funding of ads maintaining Olickal has taken money from GOP-oriented donors. They seem to be the only iffy ads in support of Stoneback, who promised a clean campaign.

At a recent forum, the opinions of Olickal and Stoneback sounded similar, some attendees said.

But they don’t seem similar in political ads.

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