TTAG reader Bud Harton writes:
[Ed: Also this year, during the floor debate in the Illinois Senate preceding the vote, Senator Don Harmon said (at 2:04:38 of this video): “I have done the best I could to amend the bill to eliminate opposition. We have secured the neutrality of the gun manufacturers and their suppliers. There are clear exemptions in the bill for them.”]
This bill [SB 1657] was introduced into the Illinois House last Spring and defeated. It contained the exact same language as the present bill. But if you read the House transcript on the day it was defeated, you will see the House sponsor, Rep. Kathleen Willis describing Amendment 6 which is exactly where the carve out was added.
She also describes the language of the carve out as “So… we took in… making sure we added additional exemptions, we put in the manufacturers of firearms are exempt, and that is, in fact, one of the reasons we had so many making sure that we listen to their language and put their language in there directly.”
That means the manufacturers were already aware of the provision and as a matter of fact, they wrote the actual language that provided them an exemption. So how is it possible that Springfield Armory didn’t know about it?
Read it for yourself: http://www.ilga.gov/house/transcripts/htrans99/09900138.pdf