Daley Says Gun Owners Not Jumping Through Hoops
Some choice quotes from Chicago Mayor Richard Daley this week, as reported by The Chicago Sun Times:
“We’re not jumping through hoops. We have to have accountability. … This is protection of the city from lawsuits from a lot of people. You have to ask for reasonable gun laws. Until the federal government seizes more illegal guns, that is the issue.”
This is just one of several choice quotes from Daley, and it makes us seriously think he doesn’t understand the greater issue. How again does allowing law-abiding citizens to have greater access to firearms cause more crime? And how exactly would a crackdown on illegal guns reduce lawsuits against the city?
To us it appears that Daley is scrapping the bottle of the barrel and grasping at straws to make his argument. The problem is that law-abiding citizens are still caught in the ensuing cross fire.
Firing Back: Chicago’s Take on Long Guns
This week we’re seeing a lot of the fallout of last week’s Supreme Court ruling. Chicago has attempted to do an end run around the Supreme Court of the United States – the highest court in the land – by coming up with new and extremely vague laws.
One part we missed at first is only getting minor play in the mainstream media. So far we haven’t seen much pickup on it either, suggesting that it is something the city is trying to slip through. Numerous news organizations, such as Bloomberg Businessweek noted it however:
“The new law limits possession of handguns to the home and possession of long guns to places of business.”
Are we reading this right? Long guns can only be held in places of businesses? Is it just us, or does this statement make no sense? Most workers, blue collar or white collar, probably don’t take a rifle or shotgun to work. So exactly what “place of business” requires or is suitable for a long gun? This sounds like a way to make it so difficult and impossible to own such an item that people won’t bother. Nice way to get around the Constitution. Let the lawsuits begin.
Does SCOTUS Ruling Matter to Daley?
Apparently the freedoms that this nation fought so hard for, and were remembered this past weekend are lost on Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. FoxNews.com offers this interesting take on how Daley has responded to the Supreme Court ruling:
- Gun owners need a Chicago Firearms permit, which costs $100 and must be renewed every 3 years, in addition to their Illinois Firearm owner’s ID.
- Firearms sales are banned in the city.
- Chicago residents can register only 1 handgun per month.
- When a weapon is transported it much be taken apart and not accessible.
- It is illegal to have your gun on the porch, yard or Garage. The gun is only legal inside the residence.
- Only one gun in the house can be ready to be fired. The rest must have trigger locks or be disassembled.
- Guns are banned from hotels, dorms or group living environments.
- Does any of this sound reasonable? What exactly is a “group living environment?” Is that a fancy word for apartment building? That hardly seems fair. Likewise, it is illegal to have guns in your own yard or garage?
Apparently Daley isn’t going down without a fight. Fortunately would-be gun owners still have the SCOTUS ruling on their side.
ABC7 in Chicago Notes Point Few Others Address
The local media in Chicago obviously has been reporting a lot about the SCOTUS ruling. But ABC 7, WLS-TV, in Chicago offered an interesting point in its coverage:
“Gun rights advocates, who are reviewing the ordinance, say the law does not address the issue of illegal handgun possession.”
So let’s look at this point. The Supreme Court did NOT rule that criminals could possess guns. So criminals that had guns last week will of course have them next week. Even if the ruling had gone the other way, and upheld the ban, the point would have been that criminals would still have had guns. In other words, criminals will have guns despite the law. Isn’t that clear enough?
Chicago Sun Times Offers Biased Take on Chicago Gun Laws
Mayor Richard Daley isn’t taking the SCOTUS ruling well, and apparently neither is Fran Spielman, City Hall Reporter, at The Chicago Sun Times, who writes:
“Chicagoans could still purchase up to a dozen handguns a year — without liability insurance — under a watered-down replacement to the city’s overturned handgun ban, expected to be rushed through today. Concerned that Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling could leave the mistaken impression that it’s open season on guns, Mayor Daley has asked the City Council to meet in special session to approve an ordinance considerably weaker than anticipated.”
Were this an editorial we would have thought it was an opinion that differed from ours, but this is actually a news story. And as such we find this to be a typical example of mainstream media bias, clear and simple. But the bias cuts further later in the piece, noting:
“If there are two qualified adults in a home, 24 handguns — a virtual arsenal — could legally be purchased during the course of a year.”
Our response is what determines an arsenal, virtual or otherwise? Couldn’t 24 handguns be seen as a collection? Do 24 guns, safely protected properly in one’s house, suddenly offer any more of a threat to anyone than a single gun? This actually reeks of socialism to us in some ways – suggesting that there be a level distribution of items.
But worse, the article – and the potential law – suggests that only a single gun could be assembled at a time (per owner). Does we could counter that this isn’t even about 24 guns at all; it is about two guns and enough parts to assemble another 22 guns.
Voice of America Offers Strange Take on SCOTUS Ruling
This has been a crazy week for reporting on guns following the SCOTUS ruling. But Voice of America has the strangest voice on the matter. It offers some choice quotes from only one side of the issue:
“Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said he expects criminals convicted of gun charges to use Monday’s ruling to challenge their convictions.”
Either we’re reading this wrong, or Voice of America is reporting this wrong, but does this even make sense? What does the ruling about gun ownership have to do with criminals? If someone broke the law, they broke the law.
And Voice of America also had a choice quote from Chicago Mayor Richard Daley:
“I don’t think America should be known for ‘we could kill more people than any other nation.’ We love to kill, we can kill overseas, we export more guns than anybody else, and we buy more guns than anybody else, and ammunition. That should not be known as a great country.”
Mr. Daley doesn’t speak for all of us obviously. We can respect that all Americans should have a right to decide what makes us a great country, but Daley is flat out wrong when it comes to the facts on the issue. While it is true that the United States is a large exporter of small arms, the United States is not even in the top five of small arms importers (source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute). India, Singapore, Malaysia, Greece and South Korea are the world’s largest arms importers at the present time.
Maybe Mr. Daley and Voice of America should do a little more fact checking.
NBC Chicago Spins Supreme Court Ruling
More media bias on the Supreme Court ruling. NBC Chicago didn’t do much to conceal its particular bias on the ruling:
“Mayor Daley has already planned for the worst.”
The news organization offered only commentary from Daley but nothing in the way of counter point, except to mention Richard Gardiner, the lawyer who represented Dick Heller in the case between Mr. Heller and D.C. over its own Draconian gun ban. The news site further offered this anti-gun bias, which to us borders on editorial:
“If the court reverses the ban, Chicago most likely will create a weapons registry and make that information available to police, firefighters and others who respond to emergencies. Gardiner said the pending lawsuit he filed is fighting a similar registry in D.C.
“The city is also thinking about requiring anyone who purchases a gun to also buy insurance — a step Gardiner said D.C. didn’t take. But, Daley said, ‘It’s common sense.’”
Is it common sense as Daley says? We question this statement, but note that NBC Chicago did not. What D.C. essentially makes law-abiding citizens do is take training courses, spend time on the firing range and spent several hours in a classroom. While this might seem like common sense, we wonder how many criminals bother with the process? Maybe spending some of that energy and resources to keep the streets safe would make more sense. At least that’s how we see it.
Does Supreme Court Ruling Matter to Anti-Gun Zealots?
“We’re not going to roll over.” Those sound like fighting words, and the truth is that nothing could be further from the truth. The problem we have with those words is that they were uttered by anti-gun fanatic Richard Daley, mayor of Chicago, in response to a possible ruling that would overrule Chicago’s ban on owning handguns. The Associated Press sums this pretty well:
“If the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Chicago’s handgun ban, the city will likely do what Washington, D.C., did when its own ban was overturned two years ago: Put in place all sorts of restrictions to make it tougher to buy guns and easier for police to know who has them.
“Prospective gun owners in D.C. now are required to take training courses that include spending one hour on a firing range and several hours in a classroom learning about gun safety. They also must pass a 20 question test based on D.C.’s firearm laws.”
To the average person, at least at first glance, this might not seem so bad. But consider that criminals won’t be taking those training courses. The only time they’ll spend firing the guns will likely be on the streets, and they won’t be any classroom. The only question they’ll have to pass is “do you have the money to buy this illegal gun?”
So all we see are efforts to make it hard for law-abiding citizens to obtain what the constitution and the Supreme Court state clearly that they should be entitled to possess. Meanwhile, criminals will continue to break the law and no amount of restrictions will change that fact.
Chicago Tribune Sees the Light on Chicago Gun Ban
The lines are clearly being drawn in the war over guns in the Windy City, and this week The Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman fired back at Mayor Richard Daley. This comes after an elderly man shot and killed an armed intruder. As the Tribune blog post noted, “having a handgun ready may have saved their lives.”
The Tribune further sums it best with this sentiment:
“It might be nice to live in a society without guns and gun violence. But that’s not an option. So the question is: Would you rather live in a city where a violent criminal can break into a house with no fear of encountering a resident with a pistol? Or a city where the criminal has to worry that any homeowner may have deadly force at hand? I’ll bet the neighbors of the 80-year-old man would prefer the latter.”
What more could we say?
Firing Back: Does Supreme Court Not Matter To Daley? Does This Guy Think Before Speaking?
In a blog post for The Chicago Tribune it makes it perfectly clear that the rule of law doesn’t matter to some gun-hating mayors around the country. Apparently men like Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago is just such an example, notes the post:
“Mayor Richard Daley today rejected the idea that the Supreme Court is likely to overturn the city’s gun ban, but said that he will be ready to act quickly to put in place restrictions on gun ownership if it does.”
The post further quotes Daley, almost suggesting that he hopes something bad will happen to chance some minds:
“You have to have confidence in the Supreme Court, Maybe they’ll see the light of day. Maybe one of them will have an incident and they’ll change their mind overnight, going to and from work.”
So we’ll ask the question, no one else seems to ask… does Daley think before he speaks? The Tribune blog post also quotes him saying this choice statement:
“Whatever the details of the court’s ruling will be, we will always find new ways to keep guns off our streets.”
The sentiment is good. The possibility of this statement being true is ridiculous. Daley can’t possibly believe he can keep “guns off the streets.” What he can do is make it harder for law-abiding citizens to own guns. Of course, this comes from the guy who just days ago told a reporter that Chicago’s gun laws were effective with the choice statement:
“If I put this up your butt, you’ll find out how effective it is. Let me put a round up your, you know.”
So does Daely think before he speaks? He sounds like a very dangerous man to us, and there is an old saying about where good intentions take you. Let’s hope that men such as Daley, or New York’s Michael Bloomberg don’t do too much paving.
