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


    
Jim Butler




Daley's New Criminal Protection Ordinance

 Jim Butler, President, SCRA
August 2010 GunNews







SCRA President, Jim Butler

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results has been described as insanity.  I think this would also describe stupidity as well.

Chicago's Mayor Daley has touted his city's 1982 gun ban which the Supreme Court recently overturned, and other Chicago gun regulations which have only criminalized much of the citizenry, but have had only marginal effects on career criminals.  Daley seems to be a little slow in realizing this fact.

I feel that this Mayor who, if it wasn't for his famous father, would have probably been a third rate lawyer chasing ambulances up and down the streets of Chicago to make a living, is trying to take the lime light off of his scandalous administration, and bypass the Supreme Court ruling on the Chicago gun ban by introducing more of his outdated and unproven anti-pro-right firearm laws.

What Chicago really needs is crime control, not gun control, that criminals routinely disregard, and which only serves to disarm their victims.

The Chicago area tends to have the most restrictive gun-control regulations in the state, and have fought the hardest against the option of law-abiding citizens having the right to legally carry a concealed handgun to protect themselves and their families.  Yet urban areas like Chicago are the very places that benefit the most from non-discretionary concealed handgun laws.  Reductions in crime rates by issuing non-discretionary concealed handgun laws are greatest precisely in those urban areas that have the highest  crime rates, largest and most dense population, and having mass concentrations of minorities.  This shouldn't be too surprising since law-abiding citizens in these areas must fend for themselves to a great extent for protection.

Mayor Daley has said Chicago will be like the old Wild West because the Supreme Court overturned the city's gun ban.  We should be so lucky.

A law-abiding citizen in Dodge City was over 10 times less likely to be murdered than he would be in our strictest modern gun control jurisdictions.  While Wild West authorities were as unable as modern authorities to keep guns out of the hands of bad guys, they didn't try to keep them out of the hands of good guys.  Law enforcement didn't waste time going after good guys who made errors in registration forms.  Instead, they went after the bad guys and ultimately tamed the West.

No victim of crime should be required to surrender his or her life, health, safety, personal dignity or give up their property to a criminal, nor should a victim be required to retreat in the face of attack.  Citizens also have a right to expect safety within their own homes and vehicles.

One of the things that Daley wants to do is register all handguns in Chicago.  Gun registration is essentially useless in crime detection.  Tracing the history of a recovered gun generally leads to the discovery that it was stolen from a legal owner and after that its following pattern of ownership is unknown.

Daley's use of gun registration would be used to discourage gun ownership by the high cost, bureaucratic obstacles, and time involved. How many gangbangers, who are responsible for most of Chicago's shootings are going to stand in line to register their guns?

Licensing and registration significantly misses the mark because it diverts attention from what should be the common goal of holding criminals accountable for the crimes they commit and getting them off the streets.

Historically, gun control by using firearm registration has led to confiscation, and is about controlling people, not controlling crime!

The Chicago City Council has rubber stamped Mayor Daley's new firearms ordinance whose intent is to effectively enact a new gun ban by over-regulating the rights of gun owners to keep and bear arms for self-defense in their homes and business.

Gun shops would be banned in Chicago, a controversial and untested regulation that lawyers have said could be the next frontier in the battle over firearm rights.  This one is already being challenged in court.

Other parts of the ordinance sure to be challenged are limiting permit holders to one ready-to-fire weapon in a home and prohibiting guns in garages, porches and yards and could pose expensive problems for Chicago in the long run.

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