SPRINGFIELD — Dozens of gun control advocates rallied at the Illinois Capitol on Thursday to support sweeping legislation that among other things would ban a number of high-powered firearms, as lawmakers continued to revise and debate the measure late into the day.

The gun legislation in the House is one of the major items under consideration during the lame-duck session that began Wednesday and is scheduled to end Jan. 10. Shoring up Illinois’ already expansive abortion rights in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade is also on top of the Democratic-controlled legislature’s agenda.

Democrats in the House and Senate introduced separate measures that both broadly aimed at expanding availability of abortion services and protecting providers and patients from legal liability under restrictive laws in other states. Discussions with advocates and between the chambers were ongoing Thursday night.

Supporters of the gun legislation chanted “Pass the ban!” and “Not one more!” during the hourlong rally in the Capitol rotunda.

The measure was prompted by the mass shooting at Highland Park’s Fourth of July parade that left seven people dead and dozens more injured. State Rep. Bob Morgan, a Deerfield Democrat who marched in the parade with his family, has been leading negotiations in the House.

Despite Democrats holding a 73-45 majority in the House, assembling the 60 votes required to pass the sweeping bill still is not assured and debate over changes to the measure was ongoing.

Late Thursday afternoon, House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch introduced an amended proposal that eliminated a previous provision that would have taken away the ability for most people under age 21 to receive a firearm owner’s identification card. Welch’s version also raised the maximum magazine capacity to 12 from 10.

Welch offered assurances that the bill, if passed, would not result in the “removal of these weapons (enumerated in the legislation) from people who already own them.”

The amended bill passed out of the House Executive Committee by a 9-5 vote along party lines.

Ed Sullivan, a contract lobbyist for the Illinois State Rifle Association, said Democrats hadn’t provided enough time to go through the latest version of the bill, which he called “less constitutional” than the original.

The legislation would extend the use of firearm restraining orders from six months to a year and ban the use of “switches” that allow guns to be converted from semi-automatic use — when the trigger must be pulled for each bullet to be fired — to automatic use — when one trigger pull can fire multiple bullets.

A federal ban exists on such devices but law enforcement officials argue that federal prosecutors don’t always take up such cases and attacking the issue through county prosecutors would provide another option.

The measure would also give owners of guns that have been designated as assault weapons by the legislature about a year to register them with authorities.

State Rep. Barbara Hernandez, a Democrat from Aurora, talked to supporters in the rotunda about a deadly mass shooting in her town in February 2019 that prompted lawmakers to pass an overhaul of the state’s firearm owner’s identification card system.

“However, as we know, this is not enough. There’s a lot of things that we need to do,” Hernandez said.

At an unrelated news conference Thursday in Chatham just outside Springfield, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who supports a statewide assault weapons ban, said there have been ongoing discussions going on “virtually every hour of the lame-duck” session.

“Those negotiations, discussions continue but I must say, there’s been an awful lot of progress made,” he said.

Pritzker acknowledged the need to penalize those who would violate the proposed gun restrictions should they become law, despite criticism from minority communities who argue they’re disproportionately affected by such penalties.

Under Welch’s proposal, anyone who violates the assault weapon ban can face two to 10 years in prison for a first offense. And anyone who violates the high-capacity magazine provision can face a $1,000 fine for the first offense.

Morgan said some of those penalties were toned down in the new version “to reflect a lot of the concerns we heard from law-abiding gun owners to make sure that we’re not criminalizing anybody and making sure (we’re) giving people an opportunity to stay within the law the way they do today with FOID cards.”

Senate Republican Leader Dan McConchie, of Hawthorn Woods, said the gun ban proposal “does not address that core problem, which is keeping the guns out of the hands of someone who shouldn’t have it, like the Highland Park shooter.”

At a Zoom-based news conference on Thursday, state Rep. Kam Buckner, a Chicago Democrat who is challenging Mayor Lori Lightfoot in her bid for reelection, said he often criticizes the federal government for inaction on gun control that leaves “states to fend for themselves and creating a reality where Illinois has led the charge but we’re still paying by the inaction of our neighboring states, making us less safe.”

The dueling proposals from the two legislative chambers on abortion left the issue in flux as of late Thursday.

On a party line vote, the House Executive Committee sent a measure from Rep. Kelly Cassidy, a Chicago Democrat, to the full chamber. The proposal would allow advanced practice registered nurses and physician assistants to perform abortion procedures that don’t require general anesthesia and seeks to prevent health care providers from losing their Illinois licenses solely because they’ve had their license revoked in another state for performing a procedure that’s legal here.

jgorner@chicagotribune.com

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