You know you are not in Howard County when....

        On a recent trip to Illinois I happened to walk past a small town library and noticed the signage shown above.  What caught my attention was the sticker with the line through a gun.  My curiosity made me go into the library and inquire about why the gun sticker was on the door.  It seems that Illinois has recently passed a concealed gun law that gives residents, with a permit, to carry a concealed weapon. Twenty four states now have these laws.  The states tend to be in the West and South and be Red States.  Libraries, churches and other groups are starting to put up these stickers to encourage their patrons to not bring their weapons into the buildings.  The State of Illinois has always had a split between its middle to southern counties that tend to be very rural and conservative politically and the Chicago area. This dynamic played out in the this legislation with the rural legislators winning out over the Chicago area legislators.  Opponents of the law used examples of where this might be most problematic with bars and schools being locations where concealed weapons might lead to more shootings.
     In Maryland we have a legislature that has a small amount of legislators from the rural areas so we would not have much chance of one of these concealed weapons laws passing.  The impact of these laws is controversial.