Fourteen
fatalities and a total of 82 people shot. It’s not Ukraine or
Syria, but Chicago. The heartland city, already notorious for its
high crime rates, had a surprisingly bloody Independence Day
weekend, and its mayor and top cop say it’s because gun laws aren’t
broad enough, when in fact the relevent gun laws are quite
broad—but that doesn’t make them effective.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel
called for more robust restrictions at a press conference
yesterday, saying that current “gun laws are the weak link.”
Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, whose officers were
responsible for shooting five people and killing a 16-year-old and
a 14-year-old, stated
at a separate press conference that “it all comes down to these
guns: there’s too many guns coming in and too little punishment
going out.” This perceived problem exists on problem exists on “not
just on a state, but on a federal level,” he believes. “Possession
of a loaded firearm,” the incredulous McCarthy said, “is not even
considered a violent felony in the state of Illinois for sentencing
purposes.”
Can a deficiency in gun laws really be blamed, though? Let’s
look at the restrictions in place from different levels of
government.
Federal law already
prohibits convicted felons and people convicted of certain
misdemeanor crimes, such as domestic violence, from owning
firearms.
Open carry is banned by Illinois state law. Getting a concealed
carry permit is requires a stack of data: a
driver’s license, a Firearm Owner I.D., a headshot current as of 30
days, an Illinois Digital I.D., a copy of a 16-hour training
certificate, residency information for the previous 10 years, and a
$150 fee to boot.
The police board that grants concealed carry permits can deny
people for no reason, and they’ve denied over 800 this year without
explanation. On July 4, the Tribune reported that they’ve
been denying people who have no criminal record whatsoever.
Cook
County
bans the sale of any type of firearm to anyone under 21.
The city of Chicago this year has established severe
restrictions that prohibit the sale of a firearm without video
evidence and block stores from existing in “99.5 percent of the
city,”
according to the Associated Press.
As evidenced by exactly what happened this weekend, all of this
is moot to lawbreakers with black market weapons.
In a city that just yesterday hit 200 homicides for the
year, McCarthy understands in principle that it is “illogical” to
believe “that government can intercede and prevent this from
happening,” but he somehow doesn’t understand that prohibitions
aren’t just ineffective, but outright counterproductive toward
safety as they make sitting ducks of innocent, law abiding
people.
There was a
silver lining story to the weekend’s violence: one unnamed man
with a concealed carry weapon defended himself and three other
people against gunmen as they left a party on the far south side of
town. But, if McCarthy’s and Emanuel’s fantasy of even stricter gun
laws were a reality, would the death toll have been 18 instead of
14?
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/1rNsYTk
via IFTTT