Firearms shops soon to come to Chgo?

I’m sure some would call it a quirk of Chicago that, despite the reputation the ideologues want to tag on the city as a haven for violence, one can’t actually purchase a pistol or any other kind of firearm within the city limits.

EMANUEL: He's angry. What will he do about it?

Not that it is impossible for a Chicago resident to obtain a firearm. Gun dealers tend to set up shop in many of the communities that share borders with the city.

AND POLICE HAVE said that it is not unusual in a gun-related crime in the city for the weapon itself to turn out to have been legally purchased somewhere in Indiana.

Not that it means our city’s criminal element is driving to places like Hammond and Gary to buy weapons at firearms shops or sporting goods stores that stock weapons as well.

Invariably, it turns out the legally-purchased weapon gets resold a time or two, and somewhere in the chain of people someone gets lax in determining whether the purchaser is the type of individual who ought to have a firearm.

That is where the emphasis of law enforcement ought to be placed – on punishing those gun-nut types with a carefree attitude about where the weapons are going.

SO IT IS why I’m not getting all worked up over the federal judge’s ruling on Monday that said the city ordinances that prohibit any firearms dealer from legally operating a store in Chicago are flawed.

There won’t be any immediate issuing of licenses to such businesses, since Mayor Rahm Emanuel made it clear his attorneys are studying the issue this week.

As it is, U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang put a stay on his own order, preventing it from being enforced in any way until Monday.

Presuming that city government files a lawsuit to challenge Chang’s ruling, it will be a long time before anything changes in terms of the day-to-day practices of the city.

ALTHOUGH CONSIDERING THAT the courts in recent years (taking their lead from a federal Supreme Court that has its own ideological biases) have been inclined to nit-pick at Chicago’s attempts of recent decades to restrict firearms ownership, perhaps Chang’s ruling isn’t the least bit surprising.

We may someday wind up with little storefront gun shops in the Chicago neighborhoods (even though my own opinion about such shops is similar to what I think of casinos – only communities that are incapable of attracting anything else in the way of economic development go for them).

Perhaps we ought to be focusing on the restriction end of such businesses – similar to how the anti-abortion crowd focuses less on trying to overturn “Roe vs. Wade” (the Supreme Court ruling that struck down the state laws that tried to call abortion a criminal act instead of a medical procedure) and more on imposing so many restrictions that it becomes next to impossible for some women to actually obtain an abortion.

If there is anything about the Chang ruling that concerns me, it is the part that says it is legal for people to transfer ownership of a firearm as a gift or through a private sale – so long as the recipient is 18 or older and has a Firearm Owners Identification card.

THAT IS THE part of the process where the problems usually arise, and where the criminal element winds up obtaining the weapons they use to try to terrorize the populace – because without them, they really are just dumb thugs.

The answer to that problem ought to be a crackdown by THE LAW!

It certainly isn’t the arming of everyone else so that these so-called reputable citizens can have an opportunity to shoot someone they feel is intimidating to themselves.

Because in the end, a crook is just a crook who wants money or something else of value. The person with the itchy trigger finger is the one who ought truly to be feared (and restricted) by our society.

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