Dart the enemy? Or the only one showing sense on concealed carry?

I have no doubt that Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart has become the new “enemy,” so to speak, amongst the people who are proponents of more firearms amongst the populace.

DART: Watching out for firearms?

For years, the man that those people tried to demonize was Richard M. Daley. But he’s gone now, so they need a new public official whom they will claim is trying to take away their weapons.

IT PROBABLY WILL be Dart, whose agency, it turns out, is challenging significantly more applications for concealed carry permits than any other law enforcement entity. Permits that likely will actually be issued beginning in March.

Yet when one looks at the numbers realistically, it isn’t so much that Dart is trying to deny people their right-wing judge-given “right” to carry a firearm in public, as that other law enforcement entities are making little effort to deny anyone the state-issued permit that is required for someone to carry a pistol on their person in public for alleged self-defense purposes.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, some 33,631 applications for concealed carry permits are now pending. Of those, only 236 are facing objections by a law enforcement entity on grounds that the applicant has a significant criminal record or a history of mental illness.

Dart will get trashed by some because of those 236 pending objections (which a special panel created by Gov. Pat Quinn will now rule on), 120 of them are from the Cook County Sheriff’s police.

BY COMPARISON, ONLY seven objections were filed by the Chicago Police Department. Twenty five more were filed by suburban police departments in Cook County – with nine coming from the southwestern municipality of Oak Lawn.

Which means the other 84 objections were filed in the other 101 counties across Illinois, although 49 of those were filed in the surrounding counties that make up the outer suburbs.

So yes, the phenomenon of law enforcement being skeptical about who should be allowed a permit that gives them permission to carry a pistol in a shoulder holster or in a purse seems to be an urban one.

DALEY: The old "enemy" for firearms

Although when one considers that some 7,974 permit applications were filed in Cook County, the fact that local law enforcement is only challenging 152 (not quite 2 percent), it really can’t be argued that our law enforcement is running amok over anyone’s alleged constitutional right.

PARTICULARLY, SINCE ONLY about one-quarter of the applications across the state came from Cook County (which accounts for about 45 percent of the state’s population overall).

It just really can’t be argued that Tom Dart is behaving like some sort of tyrant when it comes to wanting to make sure that people who shouldn’t be having firearms don’t somehow get them with the consent of the state.

Of course, when it comes to the type of rhetoric used by the firearms advocates, I have no doubt they will try to blast the sheriff for not kissing up to their attitude when it comes to pistols.

Not that Dart – who isn’t a career law enforcement-type – isn’t all that different from Chicago police-types on this issue.

I HAVE ENCOUNTERED many police officers who were more than supportive of the ordinances the city had in place for three-plus decades that made it a criminal offense for most people to even have a firearm within the city limits.

Nobody is hunting within the city (unless they’re going out in search of other people, which is most definitely something we should discourage). There really isn’t a need for another pistol around 63^rd and Halsted streets.

And for those people who are insecure enough that they can’t venture outside without carrying a weapon, I’d wonder what worse will occur if, by chance, you feel threatened and fire – only to miss your target and hit someone else who just happened to be nearby!

In fact, about the worst thing I can think of to say about Dart these days is that he identifies as a Chicago Cubs fan. Which, in the overall scheme of things, is something that can be forgiven, since it's a self-inflicted form of agony.

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