NCRGuy, know what you mean. I did what you said you would like not having to do. Lived in Evanston, where they don't allow you to own a handgun - which I did though, with a FOID to boot. When the 2000 election was rolling around, I literally moved all of my guns out of state, it was that obvious. One of the thugs running for Cook County Board, Larry Suffredin, stopped me in the street before the election and asked me to vote for him. I took his campaing literature, looked him straight in the eye, told him he was nothing more than a gun-grabbing a$$hole, and tore the material up and stuffed it on my pockets. He looked as if he didn't care, he was that much of a shoo-in, being backed by Daley and all.
In 2003, I was luckiy enought to fulfill a dream and buy a place in North Dakota, where I could shoot from my front porch - and did!
Your assessment of Illinois sadly is right on. Until the downstate people get fed up with being manipulated (and taxed to death) by the tyrant Daley and his ilk in Springfield, little will change.
One can only hope that Pike County can wrangle some form of Home Rule exclusion to counter the gun-grabbers.