Will divestiture erase assault weapons? & did it have much effect in S. Africa?

I’m old enough to remember when trendy form of political protest was to talk of divestiture – as in picketing companies that spent money or did business in South Africa.

EMANUEL: Using decades old tactics

The idea was to encourage companies to quit doing business in the nation with its apartheid system of laws that rivaled anything that occurred in this country under “Jim Crow.”

GET ENOUGH BIG companies to quit doing business there, and maybe the South African government would be swayed to eliminate its legalized form that mandated segregation along racial lines – and gave the bulk of that country to its 10 percent minority of white people.

I can remember many of my college-aged counterparts back in the early and mid-1980s partaking in divestiture protests – and spewing out a line of rhetoric that might even get the more outraged among us in a “Free Nelson Mandela!” chant.

Whether it really swayed many people is something I have always wondered.

It usually got the young Republican types all worked up into hissy fits. How dare anyone try to tell big business what to do with their investments – particularly if it was on behalf of someone that the rhetoric back then denounced as a “Communist sympathizer.”

SO IT IS with some skepticism that I point out that our “beloved” mayor, Rahm the First, is now using the “D” word as part of his own crusade – that effort he talked about last week to use the City Council to urge other governments to crack down on assault weapons.

For Emanuel used a speech in Washington to the Center for American Progress Action Fund to say that he wants mayors all across the United States to check out their city pension programs.

Specifically, see what kinds of companies those programs have money invested in. Because pension programs usually have a wide variety of investments in hopes that they will grow enough to provide the money needed to pay out all those future retirement benefits.

If it turns out that any of those companies are manufacturers of those automatic weapons with large-ammo magazines and are capable of spewing shots at several hundred per minute – then Emanuel would say that they should be dumped.

HE’S CLAIMING HE does not want his city government benefitting financially from assault weapons – as though such money were tainted in the blood of the casualties of urban violence.

Which is kind of funny, considering that our mayor is the mighty Rahmbo – and I doubt that actor Sylvester Stallone’s “John Rambo” character would give one whit about such things. For that character has used so many of these weapons in his movies where he battles everything from venal cops to the Red Army.

But back to Rahmbo, who probably hopes that “divestiture” will become a hip concept again amongst the young of our society.

Does he literally envision pickets and protests to sway big business to dump any investments they have that might even remotely have a tie to firearms? Would we even get the firearms fanatics all worked up?

PERHAPS THEY’LL RESURRECT the rhetoric of old against divestiture – and try to claim that putting firearms manufacturers out of business is some sort of “Communist” plot?

I wonder if the modern-day youth are too tied to Facebook or Twitter to have any time to go out and protest anything. Although I once saw a group promoting serious immigration reform whose idea of a “protest rally” was to get some 500 people in a room and have them simultaneously e-mail their members of Congress to urge them to do something about the issue.

Perhaps that is what we’re in store for here. Just think of a massive Twitter statement – a whole bunch of Twits sending out Tweets telling people to dump their firearms investments.

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Taking the lead on firearms? Or being impatient? Emanuel needs to relax

After learning that Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants the City Council to approve an ordinance banning firearms as a way of prodding the Illinois General Assembly to take action, I couldn’t help but wonder if Hizzoner wishes he could do this with every issue.

The state Legislature and Gov. Pat Quinn can’t get its act together and agree on a new law that would permit a Chicago casino? Cut out the middle-man (a.k.a., the state) and have the council approve that desired lakefront palace of gambling that could take in the losings of its patrons.

WITH THE CITY taking a significant share of the gross receipts as its cut!

Of course, that can’t happen. The precedent is all there that the state is the lead government entity on that issue.

Which, on a side note, is one of the inaccuracies of the now-cancelled television program “Boss” – where actor Kelsey Grammer’s “Mayor Kane” character unilaterally came up with a casino idea to bail the city out of a financial crisis caused by aldermen who were anxious to make Kane look weak and ridiculous.

But back to reality, which is always more bizarre than anything any of us could dream up in our minds.

ANYBODY WHO SERIOUSLY thinks the rhetoric we’re likely to get hit with on Monday (the date that Emanuel says he will offer us some specifics about what he is considering) is dreaming.

It will be nothing but partisan rhetoric. We’re going to have to wait for the Legislature to decide what will happen. This issue will have to play out at the Statehouse – rather than at City Hall.

Or even at the Thompson Center state government building, where in recent days it has been suggested that all those basement fast-food joints and cheap stores on the first floor be converted into a casino – with the state agency offices remaining in place on the upper floors.

That idea may be the only one more ridiculous than the idea that Chicago can concoct its own firearms-related ordinance.

EMANUEL WENT AROUND this week saying, “waiting is not my strong suit” as justification for his attempt to force the issue to be addressed. Which makes me wonder in what political world he has been living?

For the whole concept of electoral politics is about “hurry up and wait.” I wonder at times whether government or the military is more inefficient when it comes to this inability to live by a clock.

Things happen at their own political rate, which usually is dictated by the fear many elected officials will have of doing something that is necessary – but not necessarily popular.

Such as Quinn, who is going to take his hits for pension funding reform if it doesn’t happen (he’s inept) or even if it does (he’s hurting retirees).

ON GUN CONTROL, the issue is even worse because everybody is convinced that the momentum favors them. It’s not quite as bad as those German soldiers of the Second World War with their “Gott Mit Uns” (translated as “God is with us”) belt buckles.

But there are those who are convinced that the federal appeals court ruling that requires Illinois to reconsider its opposition to “concealed carry” means that all firearms restrictions are on the way out.

They will counter those who believe that incidents such as the two dozen-plus people killed in a Newtown, Conn., public school and the Bakersfield, Calif., incident on Thursday in which a student with a shotgun managed to wound a fellow student create an environment in which people want more firearms restrictions.

This is going to be a cultural clash at the political level, and I’m not about to predict how it will turn out – other than to say that Emanuel’s going to find himself having severe headaches if he thinks he can singlehandedly change the political tide.

THE MAN NEEDS to relax! I’d suggest following baseball, except that he being the North Side-type creature that he is, he’d turn to the Chicago Cubs.

That’s a more nerve-wracking experience than anyone should have to voluntarily endure.

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So predictable. Little to lose. And it just might work to curb assault weapons

I can’t say I was shocked to learn of the action taken this week by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan with regards to the court ruling that says Illinois has no choice but to accept a person’s right to carry a firearm concealed on their person in public.

That ruling by a three-member appeals court panel (by a 2-1 vote) had given aid and comfort to the people who have long sought to shoot down the stringent laws that Chicago has against firearms possession within the city – and those suburbs that also view a person’s firearms with suspicion.

THEY SAW THAT ruling and its 180-day time period for the state Legislature to impose a “concealed carry” measure for all of Illinois as something wondrous – the bulk of the state was going to be forced to go along with their minority viewpoint.

Which is how this crowd usually likes to get things done – by force and against the will of the masses.

But then, in following weeks, we have had yet another public shooting incident (the school in Newtown, Conn.) that has caused people to question the easy access to firearms and the lack of restrictions that exist in some cases as to who can obtain one.

There is a strong feeling across the nation to impose more restrictions – particularly against the kind of weapons that are capable of firing hundreds of rounds of ammunition in minutes and that have those large magazines that reduce the need to constantly re-load one’s weapon.

IN SHORT, THERE’S a social war at stake here (and I suspect the firearms proponents wish they could use their weapons to turn it into a heated battle). Two philosophies are crashing head-on.

I’m not about to predict how this battle will turn out.

But seeing that the state attorney general’s office is putting up a legal fight to the demand that “concealed carry” be forced upon us is something encouraging.

Madigan’s office issued a statement saying they want the Seventh Circuit U.S. District Court of Appeals (which covers Chicago and the surrounding Midwestern U.S.) to have a hearing “en banc.”

IT MEANS THAT instead of being merely considered by a three-judge panel (one of whom disagreed with the outcome), it will now involve all 20-something judges who serve in the Seventh Circuit Court.

They’ll all be asked to get involved. And they would have the authority to overturn the three-member panel, if a majority of all the appeals judges believe that is appropriate.

If that were to happen, the demand for any change toward “concealed carry” would go away – and the burden of any legal battle would shift back to the firearms proponents.

They would have to go back to making legal arguments to justify why people must be armed while walking to the supermarket, or must be allowed to own some of the most powerful weapons designed for military use.

FOR THE RECORD, I once had a gun owner tell me that his desire to own an AK-47 and an M-16 assault rifle were similar to those people who like automobiles and want to own the most sophisticated cars on the market. That was how he felt about weapons.

I don’t know if I buy into that argument (then again, I have always thought of cars as merely a transportation device and never wanted to spend too much money on one).

As to whether the entire appeals court will be willing to overturn their colleagues on that three-member panel? I don’t know that either.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the justices go into this rather skeptical and inclined to want to back the legal opinion already crafted. Then again, this is one of those hot issues that might well inspire the more-outspoken of the appeals justices to express a view of their own.

PLUS, I CAN say with some certainty that the masses who were disgusted with that “concealed carry” ruling were getting sick and tired of hearing how an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States was a long-shot that could take down all firearms restrictions across the nation. Madigan doing nothing would have been the most harmful thing she could have done to herself.

As for those people who are now going about saying that she has committed political suicide in the rural parts of the state, I question how many votes she would have got there to begin with.

This is an issue that needs to work all the way through the legal process. Because the way things are now, all this talk of forcing “concealed carry” onto all of Illinois has the feel of something being done solely because a pistol is being pointed at one’s temple.

That doesn’t sound like anything even remotely resembling Democracy to me!

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The nada session?

Unless we get some mystical, magical and excessively speedy political maneuver, the Illinois General Assembly isn’t going to consider the legalization of marriage for gay people any time before the new Legislature takes over on Wednesday.

There’s also no chance that the Legislature will react to the shooting deaths of two dozen people at a Connecticut school by passing a series of strict limits of firearms possession – particularly on automatic weapons.

A PART OF me wants to believe that it is because the concept of pension funding reform is so significant that the General Assembly’s leadership wants to spend these final days of activity focusing on it.

Yet such a thought would be ridiculously naïve. Chicago Cubs fans would have a better grip on reality if they dreamed about a National League pennant in 2013.

This lame duck portion of the legislative session (the final few days in which legislators try to rush through certain bills before newly-elected officials can have their say) is truly going to be what it is meant to be – just a few final days of activity to wrap up old business.

It seems that none of the big social goals that some legislators hoped to get rushed through the process (so as to keep the ideological critics from being able to gear up their opposition) are going to make it.

LEGISLATORS IN THE Illinois House of Representatives’ judiciary committee that was considering assault weapons-related legislation admitted Sunday they can’t get their act together in time to get something sent to Gov. Pat Quinn for final approval before Tuesday night.

Gay marriage is also a long-shot, largely because the state Senate failed to advance the idea.

I suppose there is the chance that the Illinois House on Monday could suddenly create a bill and approve it; thereby allowing the state Senate to come back on Tuesday and give their support to the House measure.

But that seems like a stretch.

SO WE’RE NOT getting either of those ideals enacted into law anytime soon. And I’m also skeptical that anything is going to happen on pension funding reform.

It may be a step forward that Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, is now saying he’d no longer require suburban and rural Illinois school districts to pick up the costs of pension programs for their retired teachers – just as Chicago already does for retired Chicago Public Schools teachers.

But there’s still way too much confusion amongst the legislators about who will cover what and what kinds of cuts might have to be made to the benefits received by retirees.

Nobody wants to have to tell the people who worked their butts off all those years and who were counting on the pension program to provide them with something of an income in their final years that they have to take a cut.

THE OCCASIONAL STORIES we read about political people who manage to qualify for multiple pensions that add up to a significant income are truly the exception.

I honestly believe the activity that will occur on Monday and Tuesday toward this issue will be more about political people posturing themselves so as to try to shift blame to someone else.

“It’s his fault nothing happened!” is what we’re going to hear a lot of by week’s end.

The sad thing is that this is a problem that has grown so large because it has been postponed for so long.

IT REALLY WASN’T an exaggeration when officials said at the end of the spring 2012 legislative session that action was needed by then to avert financial catastrophe.

The fact that the deadline came and went has made many political people think that all the talk of deadlines is a lot of hot air. When the governor says he wants a solution to the problem approved by Tuesday, nobody takes him seriously.

So too many people seem to think this can be pushed off to the spring of ’13, then perhaps the fall and maybe even into 2014!

Gay marriage. Assault weapons. Pension funding. Add in expanded gambling and a Chicago casino, and these same arguments are going to keep cropping up for some time to come.

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Quinn wants ban on assault weapons, willing to play nasty like opponents

It’s actually one of the oldest dirty tricks in the Illinois Statehouse playbook.

QUINN: How badly does gov want ban?

Take some concept that you want but that others despise, and amend it onto an already-existing bill whose sponsor is someone who particularly hates your idea.

TECHNICALLY, YOU’VE TURNED him into the sponsor for your idea, and if your opponent wants to get what he wants, he has to be willing to allow your idea to go through as well.

Either that, or else be prepared to watch as everything gets shot down big time!

That is what Gov. Pat Quinn will be doing in coming weeks with the General Assembly as he tries to get them to approve the concept of a ban on the sale of assault weapons all across Illinois.

That is an idea that many people in the rural parts of the state will vehemently oppose because they will view it as a “Chicago idea” being imposed, and they have been conned into thinking that such a restriction on high-powered weapons designed for combat are somehow essential to the hunter out looking for game either for food, or for sport.

SPECIFICALLY, QUINN ON Tuesday held an event at Fulton’s, 315 N. LaSalle St., with suburban Orland Park police Chief Tim McCarthy (who himself once tried running for Illinois secretary of state, but seems to now be content to be known as the police chief who was once the Secret Service agent who took a bullet for then-President Ronald Reagan).

Quinn and McCarthy talked about how it makes so much sense to reduce the level of violence to get the high-powered weapons off the street, particularly when they carry the magazines that let them fire off so many rounds of ammunition at once.

But Quinn knows any bill that deals with this issue straight-forward will get (bad pun intended) shot down.

LEUCHTEFELD: How angered is he?



It will become one of those issues in which suburban Republicans will band together with rural legislators of both parties to create a “drop dead” stance toward Chicago. It happens once or twice every legislative session – usually when firearms are the issue.

THAT IS WHAT caused Quinn to rely on the old trick.

Because rather than come up with his own bill, he gave an amendatory veto to a bill by state Sen. Dave Leuchtefeld, R-Okawville, that relates to restrictions on ammunition sales for people who make their purchases from out-of-state companies.

The change that Quinn wants to make to the bill is to add on the ban – making it a much larger-scale measure than Leuchtefeld ever intended. It also makes Leuchtefeld the sponsor of a bill that would effectively ban assault weapons – a concept he has long been an outspoken critic of.

Personally, I expect that Leuchtefeld will now actively work against his own bill. He will want to ensure its defeat when it is considered again by the General Assembly during the veto session in November.

SOME WILL SAY that Quinn is being short-sighted because this tactic will create enemies among Leuchtefeld and his allies for putting them in the middle of such a stunt.

Although that really isn’t true, because those Leuchtefeld allies already are some of Quinn’s biggest critics. They were going to find reasons to bash the governor no matter what.

The fact that Quinn seems to realize that some people just cannot be worked with in the governmental process is encouraging. In fact, it is a lesson that Barack Obama seems to be slow to learn at the federal level.

Perhaps Quinn needs to school Obama on the ways of government?

SO YES, IT is true that the actions of Quinn on Tuesday weren’t done with the intent of building support for an assault weapons ban. I suspect Quinn knows he’s going into a headlong fight on this issue.

It allows him to feed off the amount of national attention being paid to firearms for at least a few more days (until the nation gets bored with the story) because of the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo.

For every person who despises Quinn because he’s a Chicago-oriented guy (and can’t get over the fact that the rural-oriented guy they preferred lost the last election), this may enable him to gain a few more supporters from the rest of the electorate.

If anything, it is meant to remind the people who should be Quinn’s allies but are largely apathetic about him just who will really come down on their side. It sure isn’t the Quinn critics!

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