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Shootings rampant despite gun ban


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http://www.austinweeklynews.com/main.asp?S...amp;TM=82835.64

 

8/26/2009 10:00:00 PM

Shootings rampant despite gun ban

Proponents, critics argue over effectiveness of weapons ban

 

By TIM TALIAFERRO

Medill News Service

 

You cannot legally buy a handgun in Chicago, yet the city is the nation's most murderous city.

 

You can own one, but only if you've owned it since before 1982, and it's registered every year with the Chicago Police Department. Gun-control advocates and gun-rights advocates don't - or can't - agree on how a city with a handgun ban can lead the nation in murders. To proponents of owning guns, it means the ban doesn't work.

 

"Laws are only for law-abiding citizens anyway," said John Riggio, owner of Chuck's Gun Shop and Pistol Range in Riverdale. "Criminals, by definition, don't follow the law."

 

But to proponents of regulating guns, it means the ban isn't big enough.

 

"Gun control opponents like to look at Chicago and say, 'They have a handgun ban and look at all their murders,' but I think, frankly, that's ignorant," said Thomas Mennard, executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence. "They're not taking into account that you can get handguns just outside of Chicago."

 

Indiana Avenue cuts straight south from the Calumet Water Reclamation Plant into Riverdale, past a row of boarded-up and abandoned buildings. At 143rd Street, on the right, sits Chuck's Gun Shop, one of the closest places to legally buy a handgun outside Chicago's city limits.

 

A trip to Chuck's on a recent weekday morning saw nearly 30 patrons walking through the door in the span of an hour. They were there for guns. Trade-in, apply for, shop or rent - it's all available at Chuck's. In 2006 Chuck's won the Dealer Recruiter of the Year Award from the National Rifle Association for getting the most patrons to join the association.

 

Employees wear handguns in hip holsters, and before they'll let customers see or touch anything, they ask to see their Firearm Owner's Identification card. According to Illinois law, anyone who owns or wants to own a firearm must apply for a "gun card," as the FOID is commonly known. Once approved, there's a 72-hour waiting period from the time you buy a handgun to the time you can pick it up.

 

You can buy as many guns as you want at once, but at Chuck's you can only take possession of one every 31 days - a Riverdale law. Most of the customers are blue collar, Riggio said, and most of his business is in handgun sales. But he doubts there is any relationship between guns and gun violence.

 

"I would think there's no relationship at all," Riggio said. "Ever seen a gun shoot by itself? I haven't."

 

Riggio declined to provide shop sales figures and demurred when asked whether the Chicago handgun ban has any effect on his business.

 

"I don't know if it has an effect one way or another," Riggio said. "I just follow the law."

 

Chicago passed its handgun ban on April 9, 1982. In the wake of a 2008 Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, its legality is being challenged. After the Supreme Court decided that a federal district could not prohibit handguns, the NRA and the Illinois State Rifle Association challenged the Chicago ban. A circuit court judge dismissed the suit but it is currently on appeal before the 7th Circuit.

 

Jennifer Hoyle, director of public affairs for the city's law department, stressed that until the courts say otherwise, the city's handgun ban will remain in effect.

 

"There have been no changes and it is still being enforced," she said.

 

Currently, several hand-gun bills are under consideration in the state legislature. One, for instance, mandates background checks in private gun sales, which currently don't require them. Another prohibits sales of multiple handguns to one person within a 30-day period. A third bans assault weapons altogether.

 

The Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, which lists gun violence as one of its six priority issues, chooses not to take sides in the debate over gun control.

 

"What we are in favor of," spokesman Charlie Boesel said, "is a reduction in gun violence."

 

The foundation offers grant money to groups looking to study the problem or with ideas on how to address it.

 

"We are very concerned about gun violence in Chicago," Nina Vinik, the Joyce Foundation gun violence senior program officer, said. "We're based here so it's a hometown issue for us."

 

Analyzing the gun issue

 

According to a study released in the spring by the University of Chicago Crime Lab, and funded by the Joyce Foundation, gun violence costs Chicago taxpayers $2.5 billion a year, the equivalent of $2,500 per household. That's aside from the emotional costs that victims and their families must bear.

 

The study also found that, too often, programs addressing gun violence lack the kind measured analysis needed by policymakers and expected by the medical community.

 

"One of the frustrating things is that the criminal justice system has for many, many years been trying programs to address gun violence, but when you go ask them what works and for whom, there's very little data," said Harold Pollack, co-director of the Crime Lab and a public health researcher who worked on the study.

 

There's no shortage of people working on the problem, and the Crime Lab offers anyone with an idea the chance to get it rigorously tested. Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor at Saint Sabina's Catholic Church in Chicago's Auburn Gresham neighborhood, organizes gun drives and runs the Do You Care? intervention program to teach young people ways to resolve conflicts nonviolently.

 

He sees the problem as largely a cultural one.

 

"Kids are armed with guns because it has become part of the wardrobe in America," Pfleger said. "I've never been at a high school in the last year and asked if they needed to get a gun, [or] whether they knew where to get one and not had at least 75 percent of the student body raise their hand."

 

Pfleger maintained that the challenge is to create an atmosphere in cities that doesn't tolerate gun shootings.

 

"You shoot one of our children, we're going to put a bounty on your head," he said.

 

Law enforcement has its own ways of approaching gun violence. Last weekend, the city hosted its annual summer gun turn-in program. Former Chicago police officer and Cook County state's attorney John Armellino also suggested that crime is linked with financial destitution.

 

"Crime is really a function of economics. It is a function of poverty," he said. "Turf wars are fights over money. Whoever's got the more lucrative corner to sell drugs is going to protect it."

 

The majority of guns used in crimes in Chicago come from Illinois, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Both the mayor's office of criminal justice and the Chicago Police Department mentioned community policing as among the most important methods of combating gun violence. Sgt. John Delgado, a team leader of the Chicago Police Department's Community Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS), agreed.

 

"In my experience, the most organized communities have the best ability to change things," he said. "My job is to make criminals uncomfortable. If the neighborhood is well-lit and clean, and if people look out for each other and take pride in their property, the likelihood of criminals getting a foothold is greatly diminished.

 

But, Delgado warned: "If the neighborhood doesn't care, nothing's going to change."

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Couple of comments.....

"Gun control opponents like to look at Chicago and say, 'They have a handgun ban and look at all their murders,' but I think, frankly, that's ignorant," said Thomas Mennard, executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence. "They're not taking into account that you can get handguns just outside of Chicago."

Huh???? :)

The Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, which lists gun violence as one of its six priority issues, chooses not to take sides in the debate over gun control.

 

"What we are in favor of," spokesman Charlie Boesel said, "is a reduction in gun violence."

 

The foundation offers grant money to groups looking to study the problem or with ideas on how to address it.

"We are very concerned about gun violence in Chicago," Nina Vinik, the Joyce Foundation gun violence senior program officer, said. "We're based here so it's a hometown issue for us."

Would it be possible for Illinois Carry to receive a grant??? :thumbsup:

 

and lastly.....

Rev. Michael Pfleger

Didn't father snuffy say at one time he wanted to kill Chuck??? (or am I mistaken?)

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Couple of comments.....
"Gun control opponents like to look at Chicago and say, 'They have a handgun ban and look at all their murders,' but I think, frankly, that's ignorant," said Thomas Mennard, executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence. "They're not taking into account that you can get handguns just outside of Chicago."

Huh???? :)

 

Well, the foolishness here is not that gun owners don't fail to consider that guns can come from outside the city ... the foolishness is that Mannard assumes that guns can be eliminated entirely by federal (or state, in his case) level bans. Who is ignorant here, Thomas?

 

 

and lastly.....
Rev. Michael Pfleger

Didn't father snuffy say at one time he wanted to kill Chuck??? (or am I mistaken?)

 

No ... he didn't say he wanted to kill Chuck. He said something to the fact that they were going to find him, and drag him out, and snuff him out. Don't be putting words in the Good Father's mouth.

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It never fails to amaze how many people take all the information in, analyize the parts that they agree with and then come up with a solution that will not and does not work.

 

Fact: There are millions and millions of guns in America.

Fact: The Constitution guarantees our right to keep and bear arms

Fact: If you try to remove the guns from the law abiding citizens, they will consider it as an attack on the Bill of Rights. You do not want to go there.

Fact: The police have no duty to protect us and they normally are too far away to get there in time

Fact: Criminal pay absolutely no attention to gun laws. That's why we call them "criminals"

Fact: If you can't meet force with at least equal force, you will lose

Fact: Gun Violence is out of control because only the criminals have guns.

Fact: Every thing has a tendency to equal out. If I have a gun and the criminal has a gun, I win because the law is on my side. Right now (and this is important) the law is on the side of the criminal

Fact: Criminals will always exist. We do not need to know the reasons behind their criminality, just that they are around and need to be , on occassion, "handled".

Fact: Criminals and politicians have several similarities. They both have a hand out to the citizens. If you don't give to one of them, he will shoot you. If you don't give to the other, he will allow the criminal to shoot you anyway and then blame it on society.

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This article from Wake Forest Law Review discusses the factors that are fatal to the supply-side approach to gun control (that is pretty much the only approach they take).

 

It's a good read.

 

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1326743

 

Imagining Gun Control in America: Understanding the Remainder Problem

 

Nicholas James Johnson

Fordham University - School of Law

 

Wake Forest Law Review, Vol. 43, 2008

 

Abstract:

Gun control in the United States generally has meant some type of supply regulation. Supply restrictions ranging from one-gun-a-month schemes to flat gun bans cannot work without a willingness and ability to reduce total inventory to levels approaching zero ("the supply-side ideal"). This is an impossible feat in a country that already has 300 million guns tightly held by people who think they are uniquely important tools. The average defiance ratio in places that have attempted gun confiscation and registration is 2.6 illegal guns for every legal one. In many countries defiance is far higher. None of those countries has as deep and entrenched a gun culture as the U.S. This remainder problem and defiance impulse mean that we are far past the point where supply restrictions can work.

 

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled in D.C. v. Heller that the Second Amendment prohibits general disarmament, the temptation is to view Heller as the central obstacle to effective gun control. This is a mistake born of our failure to confront the incoherence of pre-Heller supply-side controls. This article elaborates the supply-side ideal as the foundation of our most ambitious gun control proposals, explains the remainder problem and the defiance impulse as both cultural and physical phenomena that block supply-side rules, and evaluates a series of familiar gun-control proposals in the context of these structural barriers in order to identify which can work and which cannot.

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Couple of comments.....
"Gun control opponents like to look at Chicago and say, 'They have a handgun ban and look at all their murders,' but I think, frankly, that's ignorant," said Thomas Mennard, executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence. "They're not taking into account that you can get handguns just outside of Chicago."

Huh???? :)

 

Well, the foolishness here is not that gun owners don't fail to consider that guns can come from outside the city ... the foolishness is that Mannard assumes that guns can be eliminated entirely by federal (or state, in his case) level bans. Who is ignorant here, Thomas?

 

 

and lastly.....
Rev. Michael Pfleger

Didn't father snuffy say at one time he wanted to kill Chuck??? (or am I mistaken?)

 

No ... he didn't say he wanted to kill Chuck. He said something to the fact that they were going to find him, and drag him out, and snuff him out. Don't be putting words in the Good Father's mouth.

But what about getting a grant from Joyce???

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It never fails to amaze how many people take all the information in, analyize the parts that they agree with and then come up with a solution that will not and does not work.

 

Fact: There are millions and millions of guns in America.

Fact: The Constitution guarantees our right to keep and bear arms

Fact: If you try to remove the guns from the law abiding citizens, they will consider it as an attack on the Bill of Rights. You do not want to go there.

Fact: The police have no duty to protect us and they normally are too far away to get there in time

Fact: Criminal pay absolutely no attention to gun laws. That's why we call them "criminals"

Fact: If you can't meet force with at least equal force, you will lose

Fact: Gun Violence is out of control because only the criminals have guns.

Fact: Every thing has a tendency to equal out. If I have a gun and the criminal has a gun, I win because the law is on my side. Right now (and this is important) the law is on the side of the criminal

Fact: Criminals will always exist. We do not need to know the reasons behind their criminality, just that they are around and need to be , on occassion, "handled".

Fact: Criminals and politicians have several similarities. They both have a hand out to the citizens. If you don't give to one of them, he will shoot you. If you don't give to the other, he will allow the criminal to shoot you anyway and then blame it on society.

Great points! :)

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But what about getting a grant from Joyce???

 

Who are you kidding? No pro second amendment group will get funding from Joyce.

I'm playing the devils advocate here.....

 

According to their own words....

The Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, which lists gun violence as one of its six priority issues, chooses not to take sides in the debate over gun control.

 

"What we are in favor of," spokesman Charlie Boesel said, "is a reduction in gun violence."

 

The foundation offers grant money to groups looking to study the problem or with ideas on how to address it.

 

"We are very concerned about gun violence in Chicago," Nina Vinik, the Joyce Foundation gun violence senior program officer, said. "We're based here so it's a hometown issue for us."

One can argue that we want to reduce gun violence just as much as any anti-gun group....

 

Obviously, if Illinois Carry were to apply, they would have to either grant, or not....

 

Either way, it would be a win for us....according to their own words!

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The Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, which lists gun violence as one of its six priority issues, chooses not to take sides in the debate over gun control.

 

"What we are in favor of," spokesman Charlie Boesel said, "is a reduction in gun violence."

 

Yeah, right!

So, fund organizations that do biased studies promoting the anti-rights agenda!

 

Officer Down ...courtesy of the VPC, funded by Joyce.

 

And then there's ICHV with its "Gun Guys" voice...all funded by Joyce...

...need I go on?

 

Visit one Joyce-funded site and you'll get a link to another!

 

 

 

Wonder how much funding John Lott got from Joyce?

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The Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, which lists gun violence as one of its six priority issues, chooses not to take sides in the debate over gun control.

 

"What we are in favor of," spokesman Charlie Boesel said, "is a reduction in gun violence."

 

The foundation offers grant money to groups looking to study the problem or with ideas on how to address it.

 

Uh . . . wow. That's . . . wow.

 

I read claims like that differently nowadays. Someone told me not long ago that the Joyce Foundation Board of Directors is very protective of their brand as this eminent funder of reputable research, and it galls them when groups like the VPC get caught faking their "research." Are we seeing a sign of that here? They're telling the press that they're neutral on gun rights?

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It never fails to amaze how many people take all the information in, analyize the parts that they agree with and then come up with a solution that will not and does not work.

 

Fact: There are millions and millions of guns in America.

Fact: The Constitution guarantees our right to keep and bear arms

Fact: If you try to remove the guns from the law abiding citizens, they will consider it as an attack on the Bill of Rights. You do not want to go there.

Fact: The police have no duty to protect us and they normally are too far away to get there in time

Fact: Criminal pay absolutely no attention to gun laws. That's why we call them "criminals"

Fact: If you can't meet force with at least equal force, you will lose

Fact: Gun Violence is out of control because only the criminals have guns.

Fact: Every thing has a tendency to equal out. If I have a gun and the criminal has a gun, I win because the law is on my side. Right now (and this is important) the law is on the side of the criminal

Fact: Criminals will always exist. We do not need to know the reasons behind their criminality, just that they are around and need to be , on occassion, "handled".

Fact: Criminals and politicians have several similarities. They both have a hand out to the citizens. If you don't give to one of them, he will shoot you. If you don't give to the other, he will allow the criminal to shoot you anyway and then blame it on society.

 

...and you did not even get into the revolving door (missing door might be more appropriate) criminal justice system.

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According to their own words....
The Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, which lists gun violence as one of its six priority issues, chooses not to take sides in the debate over gun control.

 

Either way, it would be a win for us....according to their own words!

 

But you must realize one thing, and realize it fully. Those words ... their words you quoted above ... don't mean jack schmidt.

 

That is what they say for the papers. What they do is what matters.

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New Fact Added:

 

Fact: There are millions and millions of guns in America.

Fact: The Constitution guarantees our right to keep and bear arms

Fact: If you try to remove the guns from the law abiding citizens, they will consider it as an attack on the Bill of Rights. You do not want to go there.

Fact: The police have no duty to protect us and they normally are too far away to get there in time

Fact: Criminal pay absolutely no attention to gun laws. That's why we call them "criminals"

Fact: If you can't meet force with at least equal force, you will lose

Fact: Gun Violence is out of control because only the criminals have guns.

Fact: Every thing has a tendency to equal out. If I have a gun and the criminal has a gun, I win because the law is on my side. Right now (and this is important) the law is on the side of the criminal

Fact: Criminals will always exist. We do not need to know the reasons behind their criminality, just that they are around and need to be , on occassion, "handled".

Fact: Criminals and politicians have several similarities. They both have a hand out to the citizens. If you don't give to one of them, he will shoot you. If you don't give to the other, he will allow the criminal to shoot you anyway and then blame it on society.

Fact: A gun wielding criminal will walk out of 26th and California on probation and have a new hand gun within four hours. Citizens must pass a background check and wait three days after purchase before receiving their firearm. (Unless they live in Chicago. Those citizens must move out of Chicago because they're not allowed guns at all)

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http://www.austinweeklynews.com/main.asp?S...amp;TM=82835.64

 

Pfleger maintained that the challenge is to create an atmosphere in cities that doesn't tolerate gun shootings.

 

"You shoot one of our children, we're going to put a bounty on your head," he said.

 

 

That Pfleger sure has a way with words, doesn't he? Snuff you out... Bounty on your head... from a priest! His antics and the cardinal's tolerance never cease to amaze me.

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No ... he didn't say he wanted to kill Chuck. He said something to the fact that they were going to find him, and drag him out, and snuff him out. Don't be putting words in the Good Father's mouth.

He didn't say that he wanted to kill legislators that didn't see things his way, just snuff them out too.

http://isra.org/quick/pfleger_calls_for_murder_052607-b.mp3

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No ... he didn't say he wanted to kill Chuck. He said something to the fact that they were going to find him, and drag him out, and snuff him out. Don't be putting words in the Good Father's mouth.

He didn't say that he wanted to kill legislators that didn't see things his way, just snuff them out too.

http://isra.org/quick/pfleger_calls_for_murder_052607-b.mp3

Wonder if father snuffy, at one time, applied for an FOID card......

 

And checked the "yes" box on:

 

5. Are you mentally retarded?

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