Vindictive Idiocy: Chicago Lawmakers, Angry That Supreme Court Upheld Citizens’ Right to Own Handguns, Are Enacting Most Ridiculous, Strict Gun Laws in the Country
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on July 2, 2010
Increasing number of women are becoming trained in handgun use to protect themselves from attackers and rapists. In retaliation of the 2nd amendment SCOTUS ruling, Chicago lawmakers will make it difficult for all law-abiding citizens to own and use a handgun with new ridiculous laws. | Photo credit: Autographed Letter Signed, Afrocity
The Supreme Court ruled this week that the Second Amendment is for all US citizens, that Americans have the right to bear arms, to own guns (McDonald v. City of Chicago).
Chicago lawmakers freaked out. How dare the Supreme Court uphold the Constitution and expect Chicago to do so, too!
Ultra-liberal city lawmakers jumped like cats on crickets to take care of business. The business of castrating citizens of their right to defend themselves as ruled by the Supreme Court. While their newly revised gun law pretty much puts an end to Chicago’s controversial handgun ban — thankfully, the last of its kind in the United States — it’s still not going to be easy for law-abiding Chicago citizens to protect themselves. Thank these vindictive Democrat ding-dongs.
Chicago was the only major city with a blanket handgun ban. Washington, DC had a similar ban that was struck down after a 2008 Supreme Court ruling.
These Windy City clowns rushed through this piece of garbage law. Unless Chicagoans are appreciative (thank you, almighty aldermen, may I have another?), docile, and compliant with jumping through myriad arbitrary, deliberately restrictive political hoops that no other city in the nation expects or demands, they will be treated just like the scumbag criminals with their new handguns.
Yes, Chicago men and women, you can OWN a gun because the Supreme Court is forcing Chicago to let you, but don’t get too excited.
After passing background checks and registering with the police, there are a ton of additional rules. These council folks sure do have contempt for the city’s citizens.
For instance, don’t dare take the gun onto your porch. Breaking the law. Or take it into your garage. Breaking the law. Forget about having any gun protection, concealed or unconcealed, in your car or truck or RV camper EVER. Breaking the law. Do not ever take the gun into your own fenced front or back yard. Breaking the law. Do not have more than one handgun operational at any given time. If you do, you’re breaking the law. You buy a gun outside of Chicago — until you enter your home, you’re sweating bricks because just having the gun (unless it is rendered nonoperational) in your vehicle is against the law. You want some protection while in a rough neighborhood of Chicago, or while jogging or biking to work, or in your hotel room or college dorm or group living facility? Dream on. Occasional target practice at a gun range so that you can actually hit a bad guy who’s trying to kill you? Not in Chicago, cowboy.
No one with a gram of common sense expects the bad guys to give a rat’s patootie about following the mandates of the new law (or any law) or registering with the cops, just the good guys. So this mandate is intended to punish citizens — particularly women — who have the audacity to want to protect themselves, to not have to rely 100 percent on the police getting to them in time. All these rules are guaranteed to make a number of citizens, especially seniors and women, so nervous about breaking the law, they just won’t risk it by getting a gun (is that what you were hoping for, Mayor Daley?), or won’t be confident in getting adequate, ample training in using a hand gun.
So, that handgun that was meant to protect you, to save your life from being easily shot by any number of low-life drug users, thugs, thieves, or killers, could very well end up being tossed in a drawer, much like the treadmill walker or salad spinner or exercise DVD you bought but never use.
How expensive it is to comply with all the rules of the mandate is unclear. It will assuredly impact financially the poorest Chicago citizens most — many of whom are minorities and single women. They’re the ones who most need to be able to protect themselves from violent criminals, who tend to ravage the poorer sections of the city.
This is a head-scratcher: the mandatory gun training in the new law cannot be accomplished in Chicago, since Chicago prohibits new gun ranges and limits the use of existing ranges to police officers. This presents a REAL bugaboo of a problem, since how does one go to get the mandatory gun training unless he or she takes the gun outside of his or her home? So, to comply with the new law, it appears people will have to be law-breakers on another part of the law. Maybe you can get a note from the mayor, like a hall pass. What happens if you don’t have a car (single women and/or the poor) or don’t drive and have to use the bus or subway to travel outside of the city to a gun class? Could you be arrested for having that gun in public? What if the bus doesn’t go to the class, but drops you off a few blocks away in a bad neighborhood… the “what if’s” I’m coming up with are disturbing and maddening.
Maybe, just maybe, the city lawmakers have every intention of hindering Chicagoans from owning guns, stomping on their legal right per the Constitution and the Supreme Court.
Nothing like stickin’ it to the law-abiding citizens.
WLS Chicago Radio, Tough new handgun ordinance passes unanimously:
CHICAGO (AP/STMW) – The Chicago City Council on Friday approved what city officials say is the strictest handgun ordinance in the United States.
The 45-0 vote came four days after a Supreme Court ruling made it almost certain that Chicago’s handgun ban would be overturned. The high court ruled Americans have a right to own a gun for self-defense anywhere they live.
The new city ordinance bans gun shops in Chicago and prohibits gun owners from stepping outside their homes, even onto their porches or garages, with a handgun. It will take effect in 10 days.
The vote might have been unanimous, but it didn’t come without complaint. Aldermen railed against the five Supreme Court justices who ruled against the city, finding that Americans have a right to own a gun for self-defense anywhere they live.
“No Supreme Court judge could live in my community and come to the same conclusion they did,” said Ald. Lorraine Dixon (24th).
Aldermen said they believe it’s “inevitable” that the strict limits now imposed on handgun ownership will face a court challenge from gun-rights supporters but that they felt confident the new ordinance would pass legal muster.
So, these elected goons, led by Mayor Richard Daley, in Chicago have decided to sneakily defy a Supreme Court ruling on the US Constitution by imposing its will and its anti-gun liberalism on a city that is crying out to be allowed to defend itself. Oh, you can OWN the gun, but have only a cat’s whiskers chance of being able to actually use the gun legally.
Daley, by the way, lodged a $433 million lawsuit against the gun industry in 2004. The Supreme Court dismissed it.
From Chicago News Bench:
The Democrat-dominated Chicago City Clowncil – excuse me, Council – today passed an ordinance that shows their utter and unanimous contempt for the U.S. Constitution and the recent ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court that upholds the Second Amendment. The Chicago Sun-Times reports today:
Grumbling about a U.S. Supreme Court they say is out of touch with America’s cities, Chicago aldermen voted 45-0 today to approve a rushed-through compromise gun ban…. Within 100 days, anyone who wants to keep a gun in the city will have to register, get their training and pay the fees. Also within 100 days, any of the estimated 10,000 Chicagoans convicted of a gun offense will have to register at their local police station like sex offenders.
[...]
Of course, geniuses like Mayor Daley and Ald. Dixon are immune to hard facts. They’d rather go with the typical liberal emotional argument, facts be damned. The D.C. ban first went into effect in 1976, and according to the Washington Post it was essentially ineffective – gun violence “continued to plague the city, reaching staggering levels at times.” Chicago’s experience was virtually identical over the same period.
From Chicago Sun-Times:
Ald. Mary Ann Smith (48th) said that law was written for militias and, “they guaranteed the right to carry around muskets not Uzis.”
But Ald. Ed Burke (14th) retorted, “We can disagree with the Supreme Court all we want, but … this is the law and we’re going to have to follow it.”
Burke even went so far as to say perhaps the 1982 gun ban he championed earlier in his career went too far.
“I have to confess that back in 1982, when I was chair of the police committee that perhaps I and so many others that voted in favor of this ordinance exhibited too much ardor for the ban and we perhaps we should have been more sensitive to weighing the rights of legitimate citizens to have weapons.”
A few more mandates of the new law…
– Limits the number of handguns residents can register to one per month and prohibits residents from having more than one handgun in operating order at any given time.
– Requires residents in homes with children to keep them in lock boxes or equipped with trigger locks.
– Requires prospective gun owners to take a four-hour class and one-hour training at a gun range. They would have to leave the city for training because Chicago prohibits new gun ranges and limits the use of existing ranges to police officers. Those restrictions were similar to those in an ordinance passed in Washington, D.C., after the high court struck down its ban two years ago.
– Prohibits people from owning a gun if they were convicted of a violent crime, domestic violence or two or more convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Residents convicted of a gun offense would have to register with the police department.
– Calls for the police department to maintain a registry of every handgun owner in the city, with the names and addresses to be made available to police officers, firefighters and other emergency responders.
[...]
Mayor Richard Daley moved quickly to get a new ordinance in place and has indicated that he expects legal challenges to the new restrictions.
Good guys in Chicago now have the protection of the Second Amendment, can now own guns, but not really use them unless the circumstances threatening their lives or the lives of others are within the idiotic parameters of this law. What these Democrat politicians are trying to do is maintain some kind of Draconian gun control in snotty defiance against the Constitution and those justices in DC. They’re clinging to Chicago’s misguided gun ban, which after two decades has been a proven failure… unless you’re one of the bad guys, of course.
UPDATE… intriguing essay on guns vs. knives, posted at Radio Vice Online: No call for knife regulation in US after 5 dead and 13 wounded in stabbing spree
Let’s hope that these punitive mandates get tossed out soon so that law-abiding Chicago citizens are permitted the same ability to defend themselves as citizens across America can.
UPDATE, September 8, 2010… more hopenchange, as reported by Gateway Pundit: It Begins… Democrats Schedule Senate Meeting to Regulate Gun Sales.
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Extremely well put, Vicki.
Thanks. I learned a lot from this post.
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