Hoping to push state legislators to act, 10 Illinois counties passed a referendum showing support for a concealed carry law in last week’s election. The voters who support concealed carry are hoping to get lawmakers talking about the issue in the coming months.

Illinois is currently the only state that does not legally allow the concealed carry of a firearm. Valinda Rowe, spokesperson for IllinoisCarry, an online organization dedicated to passing concealed carry laws in Illinois, said voters in the 10 counties collected signatures and then approached their county boards to ask for the referendum to be placed on the ballot.

Colleen Daley, executive director for the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, said she was “not surprised” to hear that the referendums passed but does not think any new laws will come out of it.

“These are counties that have overwhelmingly supported concealed carry as have their state legislators,” Daley said. “I think it gets the same individuals who are already in support of it riled up, but I don’t think it gets any new legislators engaged on this issue … I don’t think it opens their eyes.”

Champaign County Clerk Gordy Hulten said no one approached Champaign’s election authority about placing a referendum on last week’s ballot.

There was interest in January 2011, when an Illinois House bill, the Family and Personal Protection Act, was filed. Since then, however, the bill has not made it out of the chamber and has been in committee for the past seven months.

It was this bill, Rowe said, that sparked the interest of the 10 counties. At the University, the Illinois Student Senate passed a resolution in March 2011 that would ban concealed weapons on the University campus if the proposed bill were to pass. The resolution passed 18-9.

Christopher Dayton, student senator and senior in LAS, was one of the student senators who voted to pass the resolution. Dayton, who is a Revolutionary War, Civil War and World War II re-enactor, is a gun owner in his home state of New York.

He said he believes concealed carry should be legal in certain contexts but not on a University campus.

“I do not believe that this University is a place, in any context, for firearms,” Dayton said. “All it takes is for my shirt to move (and have) my firearm showing through my shirt to make a student uncomfortable or to act differently around me.”

Dayton said he thinks many students who would want to have a concealed weapon would probably want to use it for protection.

“We all see the crime alerts,” Dayton said. “But we also need to look at the fact that most people walking home late at night are walking home from bars. At which point you’re mixing alcohol with gun ownership, and those two things do not go together.”

That year, the University police confiscated five guns from campus and an additional one that was discharged, according to Lt. Roy Acree of the University Police. So far in 2012, three weapons have been recovered.

Daley said if students were able to legally carry concealed guns on a college campus, they would use them.

“There have been a lot of unintended consequences that come along with a concealed carry law that people don’t necessarily think about,” Daley said. “They think about their own safety but might not think about the safety of somebody else around them.”

Despina Batson, president of College Republicans and senior in LAS, said she supports a concealed carry law in Illinois and is happy that the counties’ voters were able to express their opinions through the referendum.

“In our constitution, it’s our second amendment,” Batson said. “We have the right to bear arms, it’s a form of protection and our state should not be denying us that … There are regulations in place. It’s not going to be a free-for-all if concealed carry is passed.”

Emma can be reached at [email protected].