Monday, June 28, 2010
Chicagoland / Politics / Clout City A Modest Proposal for Post-Handgun-Ban Chicago
Posted by Whet Moser on 06.28.10 at 11:28 AM
Unsurprisingly, Chicago's handgun ban was ruled unconstitutional today. I'm actually sympathetic to Mayor Daley, at least insofar as I don't think he was posturing—his bizarre statements about the Supreme Court and our own Mick Dumke led me to believe that he really did think it was effective, and perhaps he had a point—in 2008, Reader contributor Robert Loerzel pointed out in Chicago Magazine that illegal guns are expensive and somewhat difficult to come by. Obviously this hasn't cured the scourge of gun violence, but perhaps it's kept some borderline cases from turning into more shootings than the city's already had.
So what's next? My guess would be what most government bodies do when they want to get rid of something they can't ban: tax the shit out of it. It's the one solution that's shared by two of America's most respected thinkers, Gary Becker and Chris Rock.
In related news, Mike Quigley, who filed an amicus brief on behalf of the ban, is now pushing towards stricter regulation of gun shows.
Comments (1)
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What amazes me about all this is that Daley and most of the media refuse to acknowledge that gun laws only affect law abiding citizens not the thugs and criminals doing the shooting.
In the rest of free Illinois (as opposed to those trapped behind the Daley curtain) we are allowed to purchase firearms and ammunition using a Firearm Owners Identification card issued by the Illinois State Police. That means we have already proved that we are not criminals.
No matter how you look at it, gun control restrictions only affect law abiding citizens.
Daley and the City Council are continuing to use this as a smoke screen to hide the fact that criminal violence and lawlessness is rampant in Chicago. This is a failure not of the law abiding citizens but of the ruling cabal.
Americans have a fundamental right to self defense. The only thing Daley is accomplishing is to insure that the criminals have a ready source of defenseless victims.
The whole State wonders? When will the citizens of Chicago rise up and throw the bums out?
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