Richard Daley almost gets it. Better late than never I guess.

The Chicago Tribune reports on a few of the restrictions Daley proposed:

The four newly proposed measures would automatically transfer to adult court cases of 15- to 17-year olds arrested with a gun; require at least five years behind bars for felons caught with weapons; require 10 years in prison for people who point guns at police and firefighters responding to emergencies; and make it a felony to commit a crime with a child in tow if that child is injured by gunfire.

The mayor also said the city again will submit several other proposals that have come close to passage in the past decade. One would require background checks for private gun sales.

In Richard Daley's mind, if you can't prevent law abiding citizens from legally buying handguns, the next best thing is to actually go after people who are committing crimes. The people of Chicago (at least the ones who aren't complete nuts like Daley) should be asking Daley why he didn't propose this years ago?

As for that last bit about background checks, I guess old habits die hard. I don't live anywhere near Illinois, but even I know that background checks for private guns sales are redundant because you can't legally own a gun in Illinois unless you have a FOID card, which includes a background check. And i'm not the only one:

“It’s not a surprise — same stuff, different year,” said Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association.

Pearson said his group will continue to oppose the background checks because buyers already must have met the standards to own a Firearm Owner’s Identification card. But it has yet to evaluate the mayor’s new proposals, he said.

There is more:

Daley said he also will urge Congress to close gun-show loopholes to require background checks at those events and change federal law to make it possible to hold gun manufacturers “accountable for wrongdoing.”

Last I checked, gun manufacturers were not above the law. If they break the law, they are accountable for it. What Daley wants is to hold gun manufacturers accountable for the wrongdoing of the dangerous criminals he and his cronies love to sit down and have pow-wow's with.

Three Hundred and Three.

Three hundred and three is:

a) The number of handguns registered in Chicago post McDonald.
b) The number of shootings in Chicago last month.
c) The number of guns turned in at Chicago's latest gun buyback.
d) The number of Chicagoans who have defended themselves with a gun this year.


Click through for the answer.

Soon, we may all get a taste of Chicago.

From Main Justice:

President Barack Obama might soon nominate the chief of the Chicago office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to lead the Justice Department agency, The Washington Post reported.

Special Agent in Charge Andrew Traver would be the bureau’s first Senate-confirmed director, if approved. Temporary appointees have held the post since a 2006 law gave the Senate the ability to confirm the director.

It's not like the ATF has ever been a friend of gun owners, but appointing an anti-gun zealot straight from the fiefdom of Daley isn't going to make things any better. What are we in store for? Here is a sample:

Traver says the power and randomness of the heavy caliber, military-style weapons make them so dangerous not only to people, but to police. They're so powerful, body armor can't withstand a hit, and they're so difficult to control, their bullets often get sprayed beyond the intended targets, striking innocent victims even when they’re in their own homes.

He's definitely a true believer of every lie in the book. He's also a member of the anti-gun, Joyce Foundation sock puppet organization known as the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

With decreasing funds, increasing irrelevance, and a congress terrified of gun control, this may be the gun control movement's last hope: Someone as ideologically anti-gun as they are.

Why the shooting won't stop in Chicago.

The story of why they won't stop shooting in Chicago.

This is the story of why they won’t stop shooting in Chicago.

It’s told by the wounded, the accused and the officers who were on the street during a weekend in April 2008 when 40 people were shot, seven fatally.

Two years later, the grim reality is this: Nearly all of the shooters from that weekend have escaped charges.

Of course, this bit of information will be ignored by the gun controllers when years later post-McDonald Chicago still looks like a war zone on warm weekends. They'll say that arming law abiding citizens did nothing to prevent the loss of life, when the real fault lies within a broken criminal justice system that fails to keep dangerous people off the streets.

So while mayor Daley is coming up with new and exciting ways to harass law-abiding gun owners, perhaps he should invest some of that effort into properly imprisoning those who have broken the law.

And it begins.

Chicago's new gun laws:

1. Limit the number of handguns residents can register to one per month and prohibit residents from having more than one handgun in operating order at any given time.
2. Require residents in homes with children to keep them in lock boxes or equipped with trigger locks.
3. Require prospective gun owners to take a four-hour class and one-hour training at a gun range. 
4. Prohibit people from owning a gun if they were convicted of a violent crime, domestic violence or two or more convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Residents convicted of a gun offense would have to register with the police department.
5. Calls for the police department to maintain a registry of every handgun owner in the city, with the names and addresses to be made available to police officers, firefighters and other emergency responders.

1. Nothing more than rights rationing. Why should I only be limited to having one functional firearm at a time? Many gun owners routinely keep a handgun and long gun in "operating order".
2. Of what use is a gun that's locked up? Is a home invader going to wait for you to unlock your firearm? Is he going to give you advanced notice? A better law would be to require those with children to wear their gun at all times. That way you're ready to defend yourself and you can keep it out of the hands of children.
3. That wouldn't be so bad if civilian gun ranges weren't banned in Chicago.
4. Agreeable.
5. Pointless. Any well trained first responder should assume there is a gun in the home until proven otherwise, because every gun won't be in the registry, especially if the gun is in the possession of a criminal. 

Those who already have handguns in the city — which has been illegal since the city's ban was approved 28 years ago — would have 90 days to register those weapons, according to the proposed ordinance.

Out of the estimated 100,000 handguns in Chicago, I wonder what the compliance rate will be? Will it be any better than the 50% compliance rate of Canada's long gun registry? Or will it be more like California's 2-5% compliance rate?

What is a responsible adult?

Richard Daley's response to the McDonald ruling:


King Richard says, "We'll work even harder to make sure only responsible adults can have access to guns across the nation." We all saw how that worked in Chicago. They just deemed every person in the city not responsible enough to have access to a handgun.

And notice that at no point did he mention any legislative action that actually addresses the "gun and drug thugs" that he claims to want to stand up to. Everything he said was about guns. Nothing about criminals. That is why despite the McDonald ruling, Chicago will continue to bleed. The Chicago bureaucracy will continue it's idiotic attack on guns while completely ignoring the criminals.

As i've said in a previous post, it is too soon to celebrate. McDonald is just a first step.

The ultimate solution to Chicago's crime problem is to get rid of Richard Daley and his entire corrupt political machine and replace them with competent politicians who realize that further eroding the rights of those who have committed no crime is not standing up to the "gun and drug thugs".

Hanging on till the bitter end.

It appears Richard Daley is going to go down kicking and screaming. As the McDonald ruling approaches, his words and actions become more and more erratic, if not completely nonsensical:

"Look at all the guns that shot people this weekend. Where did they come from? That is the issue," Daley said at a South Side high school Tuesday.

It's not guns that shot those people. It's criminals that shot those people. Where the guns come from is irrelevant. If you eliminate one source, the criminals will just find another source. Eliminating guns is pointless if you do not also eliminate the criminals that use them.

Daley also recently proposed legislation for the entire state that would require semiautomatic pistols manufactured or delivered for sale in Illinois to be capable of "micro-stamping." The technology helps law enforcement link spent ammunition with the gun used to fire it.

Micro-stamping is a useless technology that is easily defeated with basic hand tools. Luckily there is a breath of sanity in Illinois:

Gov. Pat Quinn told reporters at a separate news conference in Chicago on Tuesday that Illinois needs tough laws punishing people who commit gun crimes.

"Those who commit gun violence need to go to jail and stay there," he said.

Finally, someone is standing against the catch-n-release justice system that has literally turned certain parts of Chicago into a war zone.

The 25 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods.

I'm not going to reprint the whole list, but here are the top and botton 5:

25. Winchester Ave./60th St., Chicago IL

24. Wallace St./58th St., Chicago IL

23. Mount Elliott St./Palmer Ave, Detroit MI

22. East-West Expy/Orange Blossom Trl., Orlando FL

21. Cedar Ave./55th St., Cleveland OH

...

5. North Ave./Belair Rd., Baltimore MD

4. Beaver St./Broad St., Jacksonville FL.

3. 7th Ave./North River Dr., Miami, Fla.

2. State St./Garfield Blvd., Chicago IL

1. Central Pky./Liberty St., Cincinnati OH

The places on the list rank from relatively gun owner friendly to downright antagonistic to gun ownership. You could give the entire country Chicago's gun control laws and those same neighborhoods will still be more dangerous than others. That's because gun control is not crime control.

Violence in America is not a gun problem. It is a culture problem. Specifically the gang/thug culture that thrives so well in urban areas and takes the majority of lives. Handgun bans, bans on open carry, and bans on concealed carry do nothing to address the underlying emotional, intellectual and psychological deficiencies that promote gang/thug culture.

Sometimes good people have to break bad laws.

Cop's Murder Has Some Thinking Of Carrying A Gun

In that neighborhood, many residents have told CS 2 News off camera that they are willing to begin carrying a gun to protect themselves, even if it means breaking the ban on handguns.

Now let's see if Mayor Daley "understands" that.

My message to Chicagoans: Do whatever you have to do to protect yourselves. Freedom was pioneered by those willing to do the right thing in defiance of the law.

Richard Daley understands.

An 80 year old home owner shoots an armed invader with an unregistered handgun and Richard Daley "understands":

Mayor Daley said Thursday he "understands the frustration" that prompted an 80-year-old robbery victim to purchase a handgun that he used this week to kill a home intruder.

But there is always a "but":

But the mayor said that does not mean Chicago's strictest-in-the-nation handgun ban is a mistake or a widely-ignored charade.

Both the home owner and the invader were armed with "illegal" guns. Every week people are gunned down on Chicago streets with "illegal" guns. I think it's safe to say that Chicago's handgun ban is a widely-ignored charade. Luckily the homeowner won't be charged with illegal possession of a handgun (thanks to a law Barack Obama voted against).

If Richard Daley truly understands, why has he not scrapped this widely-ignored charade of a law? Both he and his handgun ban have become the laughing stock of the country and had the home owner complied with it, he'd be dead and yet another multiple repeat offender (a product of America's "catch and release" justice system) would still be walking the streets.

Anti-snitching = anti-gun = pro-criminal.

Stigma of 'snitching' creates a street code of silence that hampers Chicago cops.

Though the streets have long been governed by a code of conduct that discourages cooperating with cops, the anti-snitching mind-set gained momentum with the release of an underground DVD in 2004. Its staying power was enhanced through song lyrics, apparel and Web sites such as whosarat.com.

As if Chicago didn't have enough problems to burden the rest of the country with, add to it the idiotic "anti-snitching" movement. But how is the anti-snitching movement anti-gun?

Any behavior that enables criminality, whether it's people on the street not snitching, politicians protecting gang members from harsh sentencing, women not being more selective with who they mate with, or men not sticking around to properly raise their children, will always result in more calls for gun control.

The so-called "leaders" of these broken, dysfunctional communities will never turn to the people they lead and say, "Hey, perhaps we need to start looking at ourselves." No. Instead, they will blame the responsible, upstanding members of society, including gun owners, for all their social ills.

If some kid on the south side of Chicago decides to join a gang and shoot another kid, who will be blamed? Is it the fault of the kid who procured the firearm and pulled the trigger? Nope. Is it the fault of his father who decided he'd rather be in a gang himself than raise his child? Nope. Is it the fault of the mother who knew the father was no good before she got in bed with him? Nope. Will it be the fault of the community members who refused to snitch? Nope. Will it be the fault of the decades worth of liberal, welfare-state politics that created this entrenchment of social dysfunction? Of course not. Is it the fault of some guy 300 miles away who bought a semi-automatic handgun at a gun show? You betcha!

And Mike Bloomberg, Richard Daley, Paul Helmke, and Josh Sugarmann are banking on the fact that a large portion of this country is stupid enough to believe it. That is why every time there is a shooting by some dysfunctional youth, from a dysfunctional home, in a dysfunction community, ran by dysfunctional leaders, the first thing they do is wag their fingers in contempt at... Well... The functional people. Namely, gun owners. And when they call for more gun control legislation, they always look to the functional communities to make the sacrifice. After all, it's for The Children©.

And while it's nice to have politicians and groups like the NRA to stand up against further burdening the law abiding people of this country, why will none of them stand up and state the real cause of the problem? Is it because they fear being politically incorrect? Has this country finally reached the point where we're afraid to blame people for their actions? Staying quiet on the matter is only going to encourage the very behavior that needs to be stopped.

So not only do the members of these broken communities need to start snitching, our politicians need to start snitching as well. Silence has never solved any problem.