Sangamon County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois


    
Jim Butler




Chicago's Gun Ban Failure

by Jim Butler, President, SCRA
July 2010 GunNews








Violent crime has soared in Chicago in spite of their recent much publicized ballyhooed gun "buy back" program.  It's painfully obvious that the criminal thugs didn't turn in their guns. 

If Mayor Daley was serious about bringing Chicago's violent crime problem under control, he would recognize the constitutional right of residents to use firearms to protect themselves and their families instead of wasting time and money on the useless "gun buy back" program.

Chicago has banned the private ownership of handguns and rifles by requiring a complicated and twisted process designed to be impossible to complete.  Being Chicago, there are exceptions to the rules that allow politicians and their personal friends to own and even carry handguns.  All others are out of luck and are on their own as far as self-protection for themselves and their families are concerned.

The Chicago unconstitutional gun ban scheme has been a colossal failure.  Chicago's murder rate had been falling relative to the nine other largest cities, the 50 largest cities, the five counties that border Cook County, and the United States as a whole, before the ban took effect.  After the ban, Chicago's murder rate rose relative to all these locations.  Throughout the first 19 years of the ban, there were just three years when the murder rate was as low as when the ban started.

The fact is that cities like Chicago who deprive their law-abiding citizens of the means to effectively defend themselves is not civilized but barbarous, becoming an accomplice of murderers, rapists and thugs.  It reveals their totalitarian nature by accepting the disorganized random havoc created by criminals as less of a threat to them than law-abiding men and women who are willing to defend their freedom and independence.

As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that doesn't trust its honest law abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust.  Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim the government is the master, not the servant of the people.

A violent armed, repeat criminal home invader was shot fatally by an 80-year-old retired Army veteran in Chicago's East Garfield Park neighborhood.  The case is still under investigation by police, but it appears to be a clear-cut  case of self-defense.  Local newspaper reports show strong support from the older man's neighbors.  The Chicago Sun Times quoted next door neighbor Curtis Thompson who said, "It's a good thing they had a gun or they might be dead."  Another neighbor, identified as Audry Williams, told the newspaper, "I'd have done the same thing.  They say we've got to give up our guns, but that's crazy."

Chicago's gun ban didn't stop this violent criminal, but a homeowner with a gun did.  The Chicago 1982 gun ban also didn't stop the recent murder of off-duty Chicago Police Officer Thomas Wortham IV, while trying to stop thugs from stealing his new motorcycle that he had bought after returning from his second tour of duty in Iraq.

The Chicago gun ban has done more harm than good.  It is a proven failure, and has only made criminals bolder.

It is now up to the Supreme Court to restore to Chicagoans their fundamental right to self-defense by striking down Chicago's gun ban in McDonald v. Chicago, as they did in the landmark District of Columbia v. Heller ruling.  Washington's murder rate dropped 25 percent according to the Washington Times.

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