Sangamon
County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois
| |
Sangamon
County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights Springfield, Illinois |
|
 Springfield Gun Turn-In Tim Davlin's Rummage Sale Tom Shafer Speaking at the November 5, 2007 SCRA Meeting December 2007 GunNews Tom Shafer discusses the State Journal-Register story on the Springfield gun turn-in. Shafer started off by saying he hoped to see everyone on Veterans Day. He hopes everyone will turn out to support our veterans. The only topic Shafer talked about was what he referred jokingly to as "Tim Davlin's rummage sale." The City of Springfield under Mayor Tim Davlin decided to have a gun buyback program. Shafer showed members a picture in the State Journal Register of a guy looking at three $50.00 break open shotguns. They were all three identical. He didn't know if they were all turned in by the same person but he could tell right off the bat there's 300 bucks right there for guns worth a great deal less. A local tv station perused the table after the turn in was done and Shafer saw almost every gun was a .22 revolver. Shafer saw a lot of .22 caliber stuff and a lot of really ancient stuff. The mayor was interviewed extensively on talk radio. They only gave two days notice before the turn in. If you remember the guys from Champaign drove from Champaign up to Chicago with about 40 firearms and got 4000 bucks for a bunch of junk. Then they drove back to Champaign and bought .22 rifles and ammo so they could teach all the youth in Champaign on Chicago's dime. Springfield offered and gave out 100 dollar gift cards for each firearm that was turned in. The FOID cards were totally ignored, an issue that rankles Shafer. Law abiding gun owners are put through the FOID card hoop at every turn. If you've ever been to a gun show you know you pretty nearly have to have your FOID card hanging off a lanyard around your neck in order to even pick up a firearm or ammunition because you never know when some "gotcha" agent is standing right next to you. "Oh, gotcha, you touched one without your FOID showing." But when the political administration of the Davlin democratic administration wanted to do a gun turn in, FOID cards were not only not enhanced, they were not checked and totally ignored. They acted like the FOID card didn't even exist because it would have stood in the way of their petty little program. $52,600 dollars of our money went for this program. If your grandfather passed away long ago, and his gun, a rusty piece of junk, had been down in the basement forever, you still got a hundred dollars for it, no FOID card required, no questions asked, no muss no fuss. Davlin made the statement "That keeps the gun from being stolen." If your grandfather died 20 years ago and he had the gun for 70 years, in 90 years Shafer doesn't believe it's going to come up stolen. That was a fallacious statement by the mayor. Gun owners are put through the FOID card hoop at every turn. Mary Ann Young's FOID card renewal took months and months and she was forced to comply and jump through this outrageous hoop to try to remain legal and yet they are allowed to just outright blatantly flaunt the law. To just drive and have one in your trunk would put you right in jail if you're just John Q. Citizen. For the gun turn in you could just show up with whatever guns you had, no questions asked. There were 526 guns turned in. They ran out of gift cards and had to give IOU's to 350 people who were still wanting to turn them in for the $100. After the turn in was over they filled up several tables with these firearms that used to be citizens firearms and all the politicians, in their zeal to look like they were fighting crime or something, all stood behind the the table for a political photo op where they said, "Look, these used to be your firearms, now they're our firearms." They were all grinning and laughing. That disturbing image is what goes out to the public and sends out a not so subtle message that says, "You shouldn't own firearms, you should give them to us, we should have them because we're smarter than you, we know you're to foolish to own a firearm, you're incapable of owning a firearm, you don't know how to protect yourself with a firearm and it could be stolen by a horrible criminal and used in a crime." Yet of 200 million firearms owned by 80 million Americans, less than ten percent are ever used criminally. Mayor Davlin said on the media numerous times, "If it just stops one crime it will be worth it." $52,600 to might, maybe, could, possibly, stop one crime. But it might not stop any! Why would they stand behind the table and gloat? To send out the message, "We should have them and not you." Americans get to own guns and that bugs the politicians. They say that it doesn't bug them but it does. Davlin was on talk radio and he said, "Guns don't cause crime, people cause crime." Shafer looked it up in his NRA magazine, page 27, there it is, "Guns don't cause crime, people commit crimes." Yet Davlin is doing this gun buy back with our tax money in violation of the FOID card statutes and we're just supposed to accept it. The mayor can't have it both ways, if guns don't cause crime, then why is he handing everybody a hundred bucks to turn them in. If you say this is going to stop crime, then why didn't he enforce the FOID card which we agreed to in 1967, it was all we needed in Illinois to stop crime. That's what they promised us with the FOID card in 1967 and it turned out to be an absolute lie! Then they have the photo op behind the table, you've seen it in Chicago. They do a gun seizure photo op and Daley is grinning and gloating. Schumer, Feinstein, and Boxer at the federal level during the assault weapons debate in 94 stood behind a big table filled with horrible nasty assault weapons and they were all laughing, grinning and gloating. When they passed the Brady waiting bill they were popping the champaign corks and toasting each other about how their gun control agenda was on a roll. Davlin must have taken a page from the state and national democrats. Fill a table with firearms, act like they're horrible and that he's taking them in and being Mr. Good Guy with the white hat. The newspaper asked the rhetorical question, "Will it go anywhere else besides voluntary?" "Does the City of Springfield need to pass any ordinances about firearms ownership? There you go. From photo op to ordinances you have to obey. One fell swoop. Shafer's antenna are up, his radar screen is turned on, his eyes are wide open and he is watching this democratic administration here in the capitol city of Illinois, what's going to happen with firearms, they just did their big money gun buy back. One member asked, "What do they do with all those guns?" Shafer said several years ago the Springfield City Police Department's evidence room came up 500 guns short. 500 guns that had been seized for whatever reason came up missing along with two pounds of cocaine and $12,000 in cash money. There was a big scandal about it. They even tried to blame it on the maintenance guy. They said, "You know the cleaning guy has access to this room a couple or three times a year. Maybe he got them." Shafer thought, "So you're going to go with the cleaning guy excuse, heh?" Nobody was ever charged and they were never recovered because if they had even tried to hint out they had done an inventory and found them, they'd have done just the same type of table top photo op display they did with the recent turn in firearms here. They would have had some politician standing by saying, "See, here they are, not lost, found them all, found them all because of me. I helped out." They did make a promise to attempt to locate the owners if any guns turned out to be stolen property and return them to their rightful owners. Shafer thinks that deserves a follow up through the mayor's office to see if any of them were stolen and if any were returned to their rightful owners. If that happened one time it would be newsworthy. Return to SCRA Home Page |