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A guide to gun-carry bill’s future
BACKLOG AT THE VETERANS AFFAIRS HEALTH SYSTEM
A long wait for help
What to know about law awaiting Gov.’s signature By KEVIN P. CRAVER kcraver@shawmedia.com A hard-fought compromise bill allowing Illinois residents to legally carry concealed weapons is on Gov. Pat Quinn’s desk. But Quinn, a staunch gun-control advocate, faces the Damoclean sword of a July 9 deadline set by a federal court that invalidated the state’s ban on concealed carry. House Bill 183 passed both houses on the last day of the spring session May 31, with the three-fifths majorities needed to override a veto. The following is a guide to how this debate got started, and what the bill will do.
Sarah Nader – snader@shawmedia.com
Veteran Francisca Dimas takes a rest while posing for a portrait Tuesday outside her Woodstock apartment. Dimas served in Afghanistan from 20082009 and has been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury and has had surgery on both her knees. She applied for Veterans Affairs disability in 2010 and has been waiting three years for her claim to be rated so she can start getting medical compensation.
Processing delayed in 82 percent of Chicago-area VA claims By STEPHEN Di BENEDETTO sdibenedetto@shawmedia.com WOODSTOCK – Francisca Dimas has gone from serving her country in Afghanistan to struggling to survive the civilian world, as the veteran’s medical costs mount and a three-year wait for her disability claim lingers.
Dimas, a 40-year-old single mother, typically starts her day at 3 a.m. to get ready for the long trek from her garden-level apartment in Woodstock to a Veteran Affairs clinic in North Chicago to receive treatment and therapy for a litany of medical conditions, before returning to attend classes at McHenry County College and working a part-time job to support her
three children and a new grandson. The former Illinois National Guard mechanic had no idea that the return to everyday life would be so difficult for someone who risked her life from 2008 to 2009 in wartorn Afghanistan. Dimas had gone from repairing vehicles
See VETERANS, page A10
Q: How did we get concealed carry? A: The U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Illinois’ ban on concealed carry last December, concluding that the Second Amendment applies outside of an individual’s home. A downstate woman who was savagely attacked while working as a church treasurer sued in 2011 – she has handguns and firearms training but was unarmed because of the law. Realizing the public safety issues involved, the appeals court granted Illinois lawmakers a deadline of
Gov. Pat Quinn
Read the bill The concealed carry language awaiting action by Gov. Pat Quinn is contained in amendments 5, 6 and 7 of House Bill 183, which can be found at www.ilga. gov.
See GUNS, page A9
NSA revelations sparks privacy debate How much is too much surveillance in the name of national security? By ADAM GELLER
Inside
The Associated Press NEW YORK – For more than a decade now, Americans have made peace with the uneasy knowledge that someone – government, business or both – might be watching. We knew that the technology was there. We knew that the law might allow it. As we stood under a security camera at a street corner, connected with friends online or talked
With the outing of the National Security Agency’s secret program, Dan McCaleb finds that 2013 is looking too much like 1984. PAGE A2
on a smartphone equipped with GPS, we knew, too, it was conceivable that we might be monitored. Now, though, paranoid fantasies have come face to
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face with modern reality: The government IS collecting our phone records. The technological marvels of our age have opened the door to the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance of Americans’ calls. Torn between our desires for privacy and protection, we’re now forced to decide what we really want. “We are living in an age of surveillance,” said Neil Richards, a professor at Washing-
ton University’s School of Law in St. Louis who studies privacy law and civil liberties. “There’s much more watching and much more monitoring, and I think we have a series of important choices to make as a society – about how much watching we want.” But the only way to make those choices meaningful, he and others said, is to lift the
See NSA, page A10
AP photo
Reem Dahir takes a peek at fiancee Abraham Ismail’s laptop as they chat Thursday at a Starbucks in Raleigh, N.C. The young couple understands the need for surveillance to prevent terrorist attacks, but they worry the government went too far by secretly gathering phone data from millions of Americans.
CRYSTAL LAKE
TECHNIPAQ ADDS NEW CARY FACILITY Following years of growth, Technipaq has bought a 45,000-square-foot building at 685 Industrial Drive in Cary. Freeing up space at the manufacturing plant in Crystal Lake will allow the family-owned medical packaging products maker to add more machines and increase production. Sales at Technipaq have tripled since 2002. For more, see page D1.
Lathan Goumas – lgoumas@shawmedia.com
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McHENRY: Spring Grove boy rolls past competition to win local McHenry Kiwanis Soap Box Derby race. Local, B1 Vol. 28, Issue 160
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