EXTRA: Now 56 shot, 11 dead, but I still say the 10-year-old most tragic

The Chicago Tribune felt compelled up update the story they published for Sunday with a Monday report telling us of more dead in the city this weekend. One of the deceased is an activist-type who had dedicated her life to trying to combat the problem of urban violence.

Although I still say the most tragic of the deaths is that of 10-year-old Gustavo Garcia, who was merely sitting in the back seat of an automobile when another car pulled up alongside and gunfire occurred.

  -30-

EXTRA: Finally, someone willing to listen to Cong. Kelly on firearms

Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., is the woman who got her seat in Congress when Jesse Jackson, Jr., got hauled off to federal prison, and one of her primary concerns as a member of the House of Representatives has been firearms.

She has been one of the most outspoken members of Congress when it comes to the need for federal restrictions on firearm ownership and combating the idea that the Constitution’s Second Amendment was intended to be an outright entitlement to all the arms one wishes to bear.

OF COURSE, THE Congress in recent years has been controlled by Republicans who actually believe the opposite and are prepared to fight off any efforts to impose sensible restrictions on deadly weapons.

Which means Kelly, from suburban Matteson, has been screaming into a vacuum, being ignored outright. That is, when her political opposition isn’t taking actions intended to show just how irrelevant they believe Kelly to be.

So it is in that context that I view the sit-in that members of the Democratic minority of the House of Representatives held this week to express their outrage with business as usual when it comes to laws regarding firearms.

Kelly wound up being one of the people who organized the tactic often used in the past to protest wrongs being done. Although it usually wasn’t members of Congress themselves who were able to see the wrong itself!

OF COURSE, PERHAPS it is the 300 people who have died in Chicago due to urban violence just this year alone (consider that we’re not even halfway through the year 2016 yet).

Although I found it intriguing that Kelly brought up before Congress the name of Ben Wilson. He was the Simeon High School basketball star who would have been the star of the Fighting Illini at the University of Illinois back during the mid-1980s when I was in college.

 

We'll never know what Wilson could have been

Except that he got shot and killed during a street confrontation.

It’s as though this problem is a long-running one, and which we ought to be ashamed of ourselves as a society that we have allowed it to last for as many decades as it has.

“WHO HAS TO be shot, and how many have to die, before we do anything,” was the question that Kelly put rhetorically out to the Congress.

Which makes the comments of one member of Congress (from the South is all I’ll say of him) seem particularly dink-ish.

I’m talking about the one who said he’s proud to have a record in Congress that constantly supports opposing any restrictions on firearms, and how he’s inclined to respond to the sit-in by going home and buying himself a new weapon.

In the end, Congress wound up voting to go home for the Independence Day holiday. A break so they can hear and see all the explosives going off in the sky as a gesture of how much we supposedly love our country.

EVEN THOUGH IN some places, the very use of fireworks is a criminal act in and of itself.

But this is an issue that is bound to come up again after the holiday break, and could very well refuse to die off until after Election Day.

Which may be the ultimate goal of the Republican partisans – hold off on doing anything until after people vote.

The only problem is that the death tally due to irresponsible twits who feel compelled to take out their tantrums with firepower isn’t likely to decline anytime soon.

  -30-

What should we think about safety?

We’re not safer. We’re just crummier shots.”

That was the  observation I heard from a Jewel bagboy when, while bagging some grocery items I was buying, he took a glimpse of the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times I purchased.

 THAT FRONT PAGE  gave us the headline “Under The Gun,” and teased a story about how the number of people killed in Chicago this year thus far is less than what it was last year.

 BUT…

 The number of shooting incidents that have occurred this year compared to last is on the rise.

 Specifically, 5 percent fewer people killed but 8 percent more incidents involving gunfire, according to the Sun-Times for the first six months of 2014 compared to the first half of 2013 – which was a way-above-average year.

 ONE IN WHICH people would have to look back into Chicago history to find a period that was more violent than ’13 was for the Second City.

 Now I’m not about to take seriously the views of a guy who managed to avoid crushing my grocery items while putting them into plastic bags. I’m well aware that he was trying to make a joke while engaging in some small talk to keep himself from being bored.

 He also speculated about how wonderful Jose Abreu was for the Chicago White Sox this year. Is he a top-notch sports commentator?

 Besides, a part of me wanted to retort as a gag that perhaps that the statistical combination  was evidence of the advancement of medical techniques – we’re saving more lives of gunshot victims.

 THE REALITY IS more a matter of  the fact that there are certain parts of  Chicago that have become so violent – and so isolated from the rest of the city that it is way too easy to ignore what happens there.

 While also looking at the fact that there are certain neighborhoods in Chicago where violence, homicide and crime in general is so low that some of us want to believe all the crime stats must be some sort of lie!

 Which is a shame because, in some ways, Chicago is no better or stronger than its weakest, most violent neighborhoods,

 We can brag about the Gold Coast (although my memory of a quarter-century of news stories I wrote about includes people who were shot and killed there too) and try to pretend that Englewood is an alien land.

 BUT THAT KIND of  rhetoric just makes us all seem foolish. Besides, even if the number of people killed is on the decline, there’s still the reality that even one homicide is one too many.

 And to the people directly impacted by the list of the deceased, that one is all that matters. Too many families get devastated, then forgotten about in the mess of murder statistics that are being compiled.

 The sad part is that just the other day, I stumbled across some four-decade-old reruns of “Good Times,” the show where Jimmie Walker tried to become the clown prince of the Chicago ghetto and public housing.

 The episodes I saw were the two-part tale of where Walker’s “J.J.” character was shot by a streetgang member who was trying to recruit/pressure him into joining the “gang.”

 FOR A COMEDY television series, it was way too real. For J.J.’s gunman, gang leader “Mad Dog” wound up getting probation for the shooting because there was no space available to hold him either at the youth home in St. Charles or at the Cook County Jail.

 Those are a set of circumstances that were all too real in 1970s Chicago, and remain true today. How many “Mad Dogs” (his real name was supposed to be “Cleon”) are being produced by the rising numbers of shootings occurring in Chicago?

 

And isn’t that a more significant problem than however many homicides are occurring? You want numbers, check out 11, 25 and .312 – the home run total, runs batted in and batting average for Abreu during the month of June.

 They’re less depressing to think about.

 

 -30-

Death to Trotter campaign? More like the butt of tacky jokes in coming months

When I wrote a couple of weeks ago that we ought to start getting used to the idea of “Rep. Donne Trotter, D-Ill.,” it was based off the idea that several Democratic Party officials were saying that they really want him to win the special election.

TROTTER: We'll learn how thick his skin is

And that they were willing to work to get him slated as the preference of the Democratic Party in Cook County. Which would mean that any of the other candidates would have to seriously grasp the attention of the voting public in the Illinois Second Congressional district.

THAT, AND THEY’D have to have the capacity to come up with lots of money to pay for their own campaign.

But now, we have Trotter’s name prominently in the news. He’s definitely getting the most attention of any of the prospective candidates to replace Jesse Jackson, Jr. – although for all the wrong reasons.

Trotter, who should have been at the Statehouse in Springfield on Wednesday and Thursday for the veto session, actually was planning to be in Washington, D.C.

Part of it was to attend an event for African-American politicos across the nation. And it seems that he also was going to work his connections to try to raise some of the money he needs if he is to campaign seriously in the special election cycle that runs through April 9.

BUT AS MANY of us know, he never got on the airplane at O’Hare International Airport. He spent Wednesday-into-Thursday in a Chicago Police lockup.

His carry-on bag was found to have a pistol in it, along with a clip loaded with ammunition. He faces charges in Cook County Circuit Court, and bond was set for him at $25,000 on Thursday.

It had some people initially speculating that Trotter is going to prison. He’s going to be a felon. He can’t run for office. So which of the other nothings will manage to come forward.

Of course, much of that speculation was from people who didn’t like the idea of Trotter being considered all-so-dominant to begin with.

THEY WANT TO believe he’s political toast!

Upon learning details, I have to admit that I’m swayed by the fact that Trotter actually has a permit to carry this particular weapon (one he got through connections he has with a security company). That may well be the factor that ultimately gets the current felony charges reduced to something less significant.

Besides, I have known many political people (particularly when it comes to those officials who represent African-American constituencies -- remember Dorothy Tillman?!?) who manage to get some sort of credential that gives them the authority to carry a pistol.

It’s as though they think electoral office includes a firearms permit as one of its perks!

SO THE IDEA that Trotter would feel the need to have a firearm? I’m not shocked.

The part that is shocking is Trotter’s story that he “forgot” he was carrying the weapon. “I forgot” usually doesn’t work as a legal alibi in criminal cases – although I couldn’t help noting that the Capitol Fax newsletter looked up the relevant criminal statute and found that prosecutors will have to prove that Trotter “knowingly (had) in his or her possession any firearm …”

“I forgot,” combined with that legal permit, may well get him out of any serious trouble.

But there are legal issues, then there is public perception.

AND THAT IS where the Trotter campaign for Congress is going to take a blow – although some of those Democratic Party officials told the Chicago Sun-Times that they’re sticking behind Trotter for the time being.

I’m just waiting to see which candidate is the first to use their precious campaign funds to produce and air a negative ad that bashes Trotter as some sort of gun-toting maniac!

It will be nonsense, but it will be the kind of rhetoric that he’ll have to deal with throughout the campaign. It will be the issue that all the opponents can use against him.

Although noting that some gun rights advocates on Wednesday were defending Trotter, it makes me wonder if he might actually pick up a few votes in those rural parts of the district where local candidates like to talk about “concealed carry” – which this wasn’t because Trotter didn’t have the pistol on his person when it was found by airport security.

UP UNTIL NOW, Trotter’s “trademark,” so to speak, were the bowties that he always wore with his immaculate suits. But we’re going to get a lot of material for bad jokes from the happenings of the past couple of days.

How long until we get the image of Trotter as a bow-tied,  but gun-toting, cowboy walking his way up toward Capitol Hill?

  -30-

We really are a split state

Illinois truly has become a place split between “Chicagoland” and “Downstate.”

OBAMA: Overcomes rural opposition



It seems like we’re on two separate mindsets that only occasionally get thrown together – and can’t seem to “play nice” when those occur.

I COULDN’T HELP but notice the latest poll commissioned by the Chicago Tribune and WGN-TV concerning President Barack Obama.

The rural parts of Illinois (as in the ones that don’t view Chicago as a part of their daily existence) are down on our former member of the U.S. Senate.

Only 35 percent approve of the way Obama has handled the economy, and only 36 percent approve of Obama in general.

Yet the overall results show that Illinois remains a solid part of the Barack Obama bandwagon that could very well send him back to the White House for another term following the Nov. 6 elections.

FOR WITH APPROVAL ratings of 82 percent in Chicago and 63 percent in the Cook County suburbs (the area that accounts for about 45 percent of the state’s overall population), he has a solid base.

When one takes into account his 48 percent approval rating in the outer suburbs of Chicago (compared to 44 percent who disapprove), it means that the two-thirds of Illinois that is Chicago-area will overcome the resistance that is felt in the rest of the state.

In short, the 2012 elections in Illinois will look a lot like the 2010 election cycle – all those counties in red with just two or three blue blotches that can barely be seen by the naked eye.

EMANUEL: Wants handgun registry


Yet those two or three blotches will account for so many more people than the sea of red.

IF ANYTHING, THIS shows why the Democratic officials who gained control of the redistricting process handled the creation of new districts the way in which they did.

There simply aren’t many congressional or legislative districts that center around those “collar” counties (as in DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will). The people who live there will be voting in districts that are extensions of Cook County districts – and were drawn in ways so that the Cook County portions will likely prevail.

If that 48 percent (rather mediocre) approval rating were centered around specific districts, they could do some harm. Instead, Chicago and the inner suburbs will overcome their hesitancy and likely prevail.

And combined, they will “do in” the desires of places like Rockford or Danville or Marion. It all comes down to numbers. Which means we’ll hear a lot more grievances in coming years about how Chicago just overwhelmed the rest of Illinois.

IN SHORT, WE’RE going to see the regional partisanship grow to even more intense levels. Which is why I find it interesting that Mayor Rahm Emanuel says he’s pushing for a new measure related to handguns.

Former Mayor Richard M. Daley was already the anti-christ to many rural interests because of the continuous measures he pushed for related to restricting firearms.

It seems that Emanuel will follow in the same path, which is bound to instigate the regional split even moreso.

For Emanuel says he wants the General Assembly to approve an Illinois handgun registry.

CURRENTLY, PEOPLE ARE supposed to register their firearms with their local police. Emanuel wants something on a larger scale, saying that a statewide registry would make it easier for police here to figure out where all the illegal firearms are coming from.

As in the notion that it is the “rural” people who are peddling firearms to Chicagoans with a desire to do ill will upon others.

You just know this will stir up the resentment all the more – and not just because some will want to see it as a new tax (a $65 registration fee paid to the state whenever anyone buys a new handgun).

HARRIS: Wants marriage for all

At least Emanuel was honest enough to admit the difficulty in pushing for such a measure when he announced his intentions during an appearance in the far South Side Roseland neighborhood.

BECAUSE THERE ARE some people who will want to view this as an invasion of their privacy – the notion of having to provide their name, address and serial number of all their weapons. Then again, these are likely the same crackpots who think that state-issued driver’s licenses are somehow an un-Christian or un-American concept.



It will be interesting to see how many (actually, how few) rural legislators bother to take this bill (which has yet to be introduced) seriously. Somehow, I think it will be used for target practice by the members of the Illinois Legislative Sportsmen’s Caucus (which is what the rural legislators like to call themselves when they feel like sounding official).

It may even wind up being less liked in certain circles than the bill introduced at the Statehouse in Springpatch earlier this week by state Rep. Greg Harris, D-Chicago, to create full marriage rights for gay couples – yet another issue that will expose the Land of Lincoln’s regional split.

And a split that ultimately will prevent serious solutions to problems from being achieved.

  -30-

Goofy gabbing from government geeks; Why else would they try for gun deal?

This commentary is a repeat of the essay originally  published here on Thursday that was blipped out of existence, so to speak, by Blogger – which had technical difficulties that made it impossible for me to edit copy on this site for a 24-hour time period on Thursday and Friday.

  -0-

A part of me would like to believe that Rich Miller, the puiblisher of the Capitol Fax newsletter out of Springfield and its accompanying website, is somehow missing the mark on one of his latest reports.

But the Rich Miller I knew when I was a Statehouse reporter-type just over a decade ago was fairly accurate. So it seems that some of our state government officials are so determined to get something resembling the carrying of concealed firearms written into Illinois law that they have concocted one of the stupidest compromises I have ever heard of.

AS REPORTED BY Capitol Fax, there is talk of a "concealed carry" bill that would allow each of Illinois' 102 county sheriffs to decide whether or not their counties would issue permits to people that would allow them to have that pistol in a purse or suck in their pants waistband.

The measure that failed to make it through the Illinois House of Representatives recently would have required all sheriffs to issue the permits once applicants received a certain amount of training and passed something resembling a background check.

My guess is that the proponents of such a law (I'm not one of them, as I'm sure regular readers of these commentaries figured out a long time ago) think that these local cops will be ideologically conservative enough that they will go along with the "concealed carry" permits.

Critics of such laws probably also think that those cops will follow along with what I have seen in dealing with police -- a mentality that would prefer as few weapons out on the street as possible because of the chance that something can go wrong.

WHICH, WHEN IT comes to handguns, means that someone can get injured or killed.

Somehow, I suspect that Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart wouldn't be among the ideologues who would start issuing such permits. Which would mean that for us Chicago residents who are disgusted with the legal antics that are encouraging these firearms proponents, we likely would get to keep our status quo.

Which would mean that anybody found by police with a firearm had better come up with a very good explanation as to why they're carrying it.

And if it were really just a matter of letting local sheriffs decide this issue, I'd agree there is a chance that the end result likely would reflect local opinion.

THE PROBLEM, AS I see it, is that this creates the overwhelming chance for chaos.

Illinois would become a goofy patchwork of counties and people would have to keep it straight in their minds which ones think it is sensible for people to be "packing heat," and which realize just how foolish the concept is.

But those permits approved by county sheriffs would be valid statewide. Which means that those people who live in counties where such activity would be considered acceptable would then be able to venture into Cook County with their card and their firearms.

I can already envision in my mind the lawsuit that gets filed by some downstate resident who gets arrested with a firearm because some Chicago cop (or perhaps one from one of the inner suburbs) sees a pistol and makes an arrest.

WE'RE ASKING ALRLEADY-overburdened law enforcement officers to have to make yet another judgment call as to who in Chicago should be allowed to walk away from a stop with their pistol and who should be taken into custody.

I'm getting a headache just writing these sentences about the confusion. What will it be like for the actual officer would have to be thought of as a nightmare.

Who's also to say that we wouldn't suddenly get a surge in the number of Chicago-area people who somehow try to establish themselves as residents of one of those rural counties so they can get the permit?

I'm sure they could be hit with criminal charges related to deceptive use of an address. But it just seems a lot easier to me for the state to not take this political step.

SO WHY ARE our state legislators even bothering?

It all goes back to the concept that some of the rural legislators think they are owed a favorable vote on this bill, as some sort of compromise for some of the progressive measures that Illinois state officials have had the courage to approve in recent months.

It would seem that they're so desperate to say they got something falling under the category of "concealed carry" approved into law that they're even willing to settle for something as confusing and convoluted as this proposed compromise.

It wouldn't be real activity. It would be minor. But they could exaggerate it into a "significant" achievement. I'd say why bother.

IF ANYTHING, THIS issue is making our Legislature look as ridiculous as the officials in Indiana, who were so determined to say they passed an "immigration reform" bill that favors conservative ideologues that they stripped out most of the truly despicable measures -- leaving behind just a few nuisance measures so that the "right" can say they harassed people who weren't just like themselves.

I wish Illinois officials would write this issue off for the year (I'm sure they'll come back with full force in 2012). After all, there is still a state budget that needs to be put togetherm, with significant holes that need to be plugged.

Then again, Illinois' General Assembly wouldn't be behaving like itself if someone wasn't wasting significant amounts of time on something pointless and confusing -- like a "concealed carry" compromise.

  -30-

“Concealed loaded handguns” – The new terminology for people who oppose bill

Those of us who think that allowing people to carry firearms on their person in public is a stupid idea got one bit of good news on Tuesday – Gov. Pat Quinn seems to be on our side.

QUINN: Preparing his "veto" stamp



He says that if the General Assembly manages to go ahead and pass such a bill into law, he will use his “veto” power to kill it off. Not that such action would mean much.

BECAUSE THE LEGISLATURE’S Democratic leadership has already determined that it will take more than a simple majority in the Illinois House and state Senate to even pass the bill, it means that they already will have the 60 percent majorities required by law to override a gubernatorial veto.

In short, the Legislature WILL have enough support to over-rule Quinn and impose the measure known as “concealed carry” regardless of what the governor thinks. The best that Quinn can do is cause a delay in its implementation by a few months.

Unless …

The Legislature is unable to get its act together on this particular issue and it fails to get either 71 votes of support in the Illinois House AND 36 votes in the state Senate. Which makes me wonder if Quinn’s point in publicly saying he’d veto the measure is to discourage someone who might be “leaning on the fence” (to use the old cliché).

MAKE SOMEONE WHO doesn’t really think much of the idea but thinks there is some obligation to support it realize that someone in a public position is willing to say “no” to the people who want to walk around with a handgun in a shoulder holster, or tucked away in a purse.

The speculation this spring is that the “concealed carry” legislation that has failed for years might actually have a chance because of the passage earlier this year of a measure that does away with capital punishment in Illinois.

The theory is that “concealed carry” would be turned into a “gimme” – a new law with conservative ideological leanings that would compensate those people who are ideologically inclined to want retribution in criminal punishment.

In short, the progressive elements get to do away with the flawed capital crimes statutes of this state, but have to accept the fact that some people will now be “packing heat” out of a belief that they can protect themselves in a clinch (instead of just shooting themselves, which is more likely).

IT SEEMS THAT Quinn isn’t on board with that political battle plan.

Quinn told reporter-types at the Statehouse in Springfield on Tuesday that he really believes a majority of people across Illinois hate the idea, which may well be true. Because the people who are most eager to have “concealed carry” usually focus their attention on the rural parts of Illinois.

That overlooks the fact that just over 45 percent of Illinois’ population lives in Cook County, and about two-thirds lives in the Chicago area when one adds in the outer suburban counties.

Which is why I’m sure Quinn thinks he can’t lose out any more than possible, since the people who most want “concealed carry” didn’t vote for Quinn to begin with.

“IT IS VERY clear that the people of Illinois do not favor this particular proposal,” Quinn said. “It will not enhance public safety in Illinois. It will not reduce violence, it actually will increase it.”

In fact, Quinn himself is engaged in his own politicking against the concept. I couldn’t help but notice his repeated use of the phrase “concealed loaded handguns,” to create an ominous image meant to scare people out of supporting the measure.

As in, “a concealed loaded handgun (carried by a person) who might lose their temper,” Quinn said. Along with, “it’s called ‘concealed carry,’ but what is concealed is that it is a loaded gun carried by a private citizen.”

I don’t know how things are going to turn out on this issue. It will be a close vote; one that may actually come up on Wednesday or Thursday. The hostilities that will be arisen by such a vote will likely be the tension highlight of the spring ’11 legislative session.

BUT IF “CONCEALED carry” does wind up failing once again (the legislative observers say the actual number of votes FOR the bill may fall just short of the 60 percent majority required), then perhaps we will have Quinn to thank for taking a public stance at this point.

Because I don’t see how our state is enhanced in any way by enacting a policy whose supporters seem most motivated by carrying holstered pistols JUST to express their spite to the more urban parts of Illinois.

As Quinn put it on Tuesday, “we need to look at ways to enhance the safety of people in our state.” Perhaps if “concealed carry” gets put to sleep for this year, we in Illinois can actually have that discussion.

  -30-

Will Daley top Meigs Field demise to thwart those who want to “pack heat?”

Remember back when we had political fights over the fate of Meigs Field? That small-aircraft airstrip located near downtown Chicago had its defenders who hated the fact that Richard M. Daley wanted to turn it into a lakefront park.

Yet Daley got his way ultimately by strongarming his opposition. Remember the day you woke up to find out that city officials sent bulldozers to the airstrip overnight to make the facility unusable for aviation needs?

I SUSPECT DALEY in the next few days is going to come up with a scheme that will be totally offensive to “good government” types that will ensure it is virtually impossible for somebody who lives in the city to keep a firearm in their place of residence.

Depending on how early you read this commentary, there is a good chance that the Supreme Court of the United States will already have struck down the city ordinance that makes it a crime to own a firearm.

The law was enacted back in the days of Jane Byrne as mayor, and was meant to prevent people from gaining new firearms. After having been in place for 28 years, the effect is that hardly anyone who lives in Chicago has a firearm that is legal.

Chicago Police literally are safe in assuming that any gun they find in the city limits is not registered as having been in their possession prior to 1982, and therefore not legal.

BUT THAT HAS the firearms advocates – the kind of people who think they’re making some big political statement by walking into a Starbucks wearing a pistol in a holster – all upset. Their political organizations have been thorough in pursuing this case through the court system.

The end result is that they got their case before the Supreme Court, which these days has a composition of judges who are inclined to want to support conservative causes. Which is why few people expect anything other than a court ruling that says Chicago has behaved unconstitutionally for the past 28 years.

Yet anyone who seriously thinks they can dig out a pistol and start using it to threaten anyone who gives them a funny look (or anyone who thinks they’re going to take it upon themselves to enforce “justice” in our city) had better think twice.

Because Daley has said flat out he’s going to find ways to get around any court ruling.

OFFICIALS WITH THE city’s Corporation Counsel have suggested that the city may enact a ban on stores that sell firearms – thereby requiring people who want handguns to go through the inconvenience of buying them elsewhere, or through mail order.

Or, if there isn’t a flat-out ban on gun shops, we probably will get city officials who start enforcing the letter of the law when it comes to anyone who wants to open up such a shop. Make it next to impossible for anyone to actually sell handguns in Chicago, and you make it likely that city residents will have to think twice before making such a purchase. No running out and getting a gun because your neighbor’s dog dumped all over your front yard.

Maybe the city will even come up with additional steps that people wanting to buy a handgun in Chicago will have to submit to before such a purchase can be made.

We are talking about the city that used bulldozers at 2 a.m. to tear up the runways of Meigs Field, thereby making it near suicidal for any airplane to think about landing there.

WHICH IS WHY the site of a downtown airport is now a concert pavilion (one that carries the corporate identity of Charter One), and nobody seriously entertains the idea that corporate airplanes will ever land again on Northerly Island.

If you think I’m exaggerating, take Daley’s word for it. He said last week the city would find some new law to pass – one that would ensure that Chicago would duplicate the District of Columbia. The Supreme Court struck down the federal government district’s gun ban, yet the number of people who have managed to work their way through the D.C. bureaucratic maze to get a handgun is miniscule (numbering in the hundreds, out of an area with just under 600,000 people).

This is going to be a case where the “goo goos” and the “gun nuts” will find some common ground to rant and rage agaisnt Chicago city government and Hizzoner Jr.

Yet I can’t get too offended, mainly because I realize that many of the conservative ideologues who want to take down the city’s gun ban include many of the same people who so vehemently oppose the idea of abortion being a legal medical procedure.

ON THAT ISSUE, the activists openly admit their goal (because they are unable to strike down the basic concept) is to push for so many restrictions that actually obtaining an abortion can be a near-impossible experience for some women.

So when the City Council acts on special gun legislation (perhaps at a specially-scheduled meeting that may be held this week), there will be a sense that all that is really happening is that the conservative ideologues are getting their long-used political treatment thrown back in their faces.

That sounds, to me, more like justice than anything said by someone who thinks that giving him a pistol will make Chicago one bit safer.

-30-

Violent outbursts not any kind of evidence that we need “right to carry” in Illinois

We had a couple of violent outbursts on Friday within Chicago, both with circumstances prominent enough that they got significant coverage in the news reports of the day.

That also means we have significant discussion taking place on the Internet, including the usual half-wits who are eager to satisfy their mental image of toughness by packing a pistol. Yes, we have people who are claiming that these incidents might have been avoided – IF ONLY Illinois was not one of the few states with explicit laws against carrying a concealed weapon.

THEY ALSO ARE claiming that the city ordinances that prevent handgun ownership of any type (unless you have owned the weapon in question since before the law took effect in 1982) obviously are flawed, because these incidents show how “absurd” it is to ban local gun ownership – a fact they are desperately hoping the Supreme Court of the United States will strike down sometime later this year.

The nation’s high court may very well take such a partisan political act in ruling on a lawsuit that challenges the Chicago handgun ban.

But none of these arguments are swaying me (or anyone with any common sense) into thinking that the incidents that occurred on Friday would have been avoided – if only we allowed people to “pack heat” and shoot back if they are threatened.

If anything, the thought that there might have been people in the areas surrounding these two incidents with handguns who might have contributed to the amount of ammunition flying through the air scares me. It makes me all the more thankful we have the laws we have now, and dread the thought that we might lose them.

FOR THOSE OF you who were not paying much attention on Friday (or whose news focus for death was centered around the Metra commuter railroad executive who apparently committed suicide by being struck by one of his entity’s own trains), the incidents took place right in the heart of “State Street, that Great Street” and on the Dan Ryan Expressway (the major thoroughfare through the city’s South Side).

These shootings were not isolated incidents that occurred in some lower-income neighborhood that many Chicagoans never set foot in and most try to pretend does not really exist.

On State Street, police say a man walked into the Old Navy store and headed for the basement where he believed his girlfriend who worked at the store would be.

The Chicago Tribune reported that police said that when he found her, he shot her. Police said he then turned the weapon on himself. Both are dead.

STATE STREET BECAME a crime scene, as customers in the store at the time fled the building when they heard gunfire. Between trying to regroup all those people to find potential witnesses and control access to the building following the incident, State Street was not a pretty place to be.

This incident appears to be a case where someone who wasn’t thinking straight singled out a specific person – even though as of when I wrote this commentary, it wasn’t clear what provoked the man to want to shoot his girlfriend.

I suppose other people were at risk because the man could have been a poor shot and hit someone else. Although police pointed out that the area of the store where their two bodies were found was a part of the building restricted only to employees.

Which is why I find it absurd that people are trying to use this incident in particular as one where we as a society would have been better off with more firearms in the area.

WOULD WE REALLY be better off if, in the confusion of what was taking place, someone had decided to try to be heroic and fire off a shot or two in self-defense? It just strikes me as more ammunition in the air, and the potential for someone else to wind up with a bullet embedded in their body.

As for those who say that if the woman was armed, she could have shot her boyfriend, all I have to say is that she’d now be facing some sort of criminal charge.

The other incident was the one on the Dan Ryan, where about an hour-and-a-half after the Old Navy incident, a man and a woman were injured when gunfire was aimed at their car while they were driving on the expressway near 91st Street.

The man was struck by bullets. The woman was cut up by shattered glass. Police say a car drove alongside their vehicle when someone began firing bullets at them. In this incident too, police do not know what provoked the shooting.

NOW I KNOW some people may remember the 1991 film “L.A. Story” and the scene depicting Steve Martin’s character, Harris K. Telemacher, driving on the freeway on the first day of spring (“Open season on the L.A. Freeway”), dodging bullets while his wife, Trudi, used a revolver kept in the glove compartment to fire back.

“Don’t point it at me,” he says.

“Sorry, I don’t know gun etiquette,” she replies.

The absurdity of the scene is what makes it kind of funny on the big screen. Does anyone think that if it had become reality on Friday and we had occupants of two cars exchanging gunfire that we as a society would be better off?

WE PROBABLY WOULD have had dead or wounded in both vehicles, and injured people in surrounding vehicles. A higher body count. Which is why I can never see the “logic” in having Illinois join the ranks of states that permit people to take their weapons with them when they mingle in public.

It also is a series of conditions that people ought to keep in mind before engaging in mindless rhetoric about how much of a burden city residents have faced for the past three decades due to Chicago’s gun ban.

-30-

Who’s scarier? Gun “fans” or muggers

It has not even been a full week since the proponents of allowing people within Chicago’s city limits to own firearms argued their case before the Supreme Court of the United States, yet already their political lackeys are coming forth with changes to Illinois law that are meant to encourage more open gun usage in our society.

There are those who are eager to have the court issue a partisan ruling (I fully expect it will be a 5-4 split) that attacks the desires of Chicago city officials to keep the flow of handguns to a minimum because it comes from people who politically are not in line with their conservative ideological desires.

NOW I AM not going to rant on that point. I accept the fact that the partisanship of the court runs in such a manner. It is a fact of political life that we all have to deal with, particularly the political people who try to set public policy that will withstand legal challenges.

But the number of firearms-related measures that have come up in recent days for consideration show that some people are just chomping at the bit, so to speak. They’re literally drooling at the thought that they will get an environment where they can start “packing heat” to “shoot to kill” that mugger they perpetually fear.

It makes me wonder if some people in our society are just a little too eager for an excuse to shoot another human being. Personally, I fear the thought of them more than the muggers.

Literally on the same day that the Supreme Court spent one hour hearing testimony from attorneys on both “sides” of this issue, an Illinois House committee reviewed a bill calling for “concealed carry,” the shorthand used for laws that would allow someone to legally carry a pistol on their person outside of their homes – for self-protection, of course.

THAT COMMITTEE WAS the Illinois House Agriculture and Conservation committee, which is a legislative panel traditionally dominated by legislators from outside of the Chicago area. It is the committee that winds up hearing all of the issues that are of concern primarily to rural Illinois.

So it is not a stretch to figure that the committee was stacked with people who will vote for anything they perceive as a “drop dead” to Chicago. Which means the fact that this particular bill got through a committee is not evidence that it will make it through the full Illinois House of Representatives.

Considering how many times this issue has come up in recent years, I’m not sure it will ever go anywhere, considering that the bulk of Illinois’ population (about 75 percent) live in either the Chicago or St. Louis metropolitan areas.

On a certain level, I don’t understand how this issue is relevant. Technically, the Supreme Court case of “McDonald versus city of Chicago” relates to one’s ability to own a firearm and keep in in their own home. Being able to carry that weapon around in public is a different issue, and I have a serious problem with anyone who honestly believes that municipal officials do not have a right to restrict the possession of firearms in certain places.

POLITICAL OBSERVERS SAY that the Illinois legislative leadership wants to read the final ruling from the Supreme Court of the United States before even thinking of letting anything advance in Illinois. Considering that the court likely will not rule until late in the year, I’d be surprised if anything seriously had a chance of passage until 2011 – which means it will be a new Legislature and governor that makes the decision.

By new, I mean new terms. So it could still be Gov. Pat Quinn (only now elected to his own term, instead of finishing out the remainder of the Blagojevich years) and a Democrat-run Legislature. But the people eager to think that their life revolves around a pistol still want to engage in the rhetoric now.

There literally is one bill introduced by a state senator from Peoria who wants his home city to be the state guinea pig, so to speak, for a “concealed carry” law.

For two years, Peoria residents would be allowed to tuck a pistol in their waistband or purse to shoot someone who gets a little too threatening for one’s personal comfort. We then would get to see the results of how “concealed carry,” to follow the old cliché, “played in Peoria.”

I AM GLAD that particular bill has been stalled. Because as much as I think Peoria baseball fans are a bit daft for having their minor league ball club a few years ago give up a perfectly good St. Louis Cardinals affiliation to be connected to the Chicago Cubs, I wouldn’t wish this kind of law upon them.

Because I can honestly envision the moment when someone gets too trigger-happy at an inappropriate moment. Or, when someone winds up being shot with their own weapon. I’m skeptical that the presence of more pistols is really going to make the masses any safer.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: The concept of Chicago’s laws that prohibit firearm ownership is becoming a focal point (http://www.wsiltv.com/p/news_details.php?newsID=9644&type=top) for the regional split that all too often defines the population of Illinois.

A lot of people with partisan political interests in seeing Chicago’s firearms ownership ban “shot down” (http://nwitimes.com/news/local/illinois/article_7bdfe577-c858-5fd3-934c-445a5749dfc6.html) are trying to position themselves with bills that will allow them to feed off the carnage of the city’s law, should it someday be struck down by the Supreme Court.

Chicago officials are going to have to fight for the right to keep their firearms ban

Social conservatives from rural communities like to say they are trying to protect their approach to life from outsiders, particularly urban types who they think show disdain for their beliefs.

Yet it often turns out to be just the opposite, as evidenced by the reaction of the activists who get worked up over firearms ownership issues. When the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the handgun ban that exists in the District of Columbia, the activists' first reaction was to say they were now going to go after the gun ordinances that exist in Chicago.

THE NATIONAL RIFLE Association says it considers the gun ordinances in Chicago and San Francisco to be just as onerous as what existed in the national capital. They are hoping that federal judges appointed by decades of Republican presidents will strike down the gun bans that exist in our city and others of likeminded views.

Insofar as Chicago is concerned, the City Council’s knee-jerk reaction to the assassination attempt on then-President Ronald Reagan was to ban the sale or ownership of handguns within city limits.

Basically, anybody who lives in the city of Chicago who has acquired a firearm since 1982 is in violation of the law. City residents who go to gun dealers in the inner suburbs to purchase firearms commit a crime when they bring the weapons home – similar to how Illinois residents can legally purchase fireworks in neighboring Indiana but cannot legally have or use them in their homes.

I can remember my days as a police reporter for the now-defunct City News Bureau when a police sergeant explained that an outright ban made it easier for police to control gun-related crime by eliminating various categories by which some firearms would be legal under some circumstances, but not others.

IT ELIMINATED LOOPHOLES by which people might try to claim their weapon is legal, while their neighbors’ is not.

As police explained it to me back then (and which they have a legitimate point), no one in an urban environment seriously is going hunting for sport. People who seriously see something “athletic” about firearms and competitive shooting are going to want more space than can be found in an urban environment.

The argument that legitimate sportsmen are having their rights impinged upon was absurd. Police in general, and the cops of Chicago in particular, are never going to be mistaken for some liberal-minded organization.

To me, the fact that legitimate law enforcement personnel are in support of these extreme firearms bans is the evidence that it is the people who oppose bans who are the radical fringe of our society – and not the norm, as the NRA would have us think.

I’M SORT OF willing to concede that in a rural community near open areas, the hunting aspect of firearms creates a different situation. While a part of me subscribes to the old joke that hunting will be a sport the day that deer are armed with an AK-47 and can shoot back at the hunters, I’m willing to admit that those rural communities might have some reason for having differing laws than the urban areas.

That is the case.

These are city-only ordinances that ban firearms sales, although select suburban towns in the Chicago area (most notably, Morton Grove, Ill.) have gone so far as to impose their own bans on firearm ownership within their boundaries.

That’s why the fact that the NRA and its allies are eager to shoot down Chicago’s gun ordinances strikes me as perverse. It’s almost like they want to impose a small-town, rural mentality that is completely inappropriate to the third-largest populated city in this country.

THEY DEFINITELY WANT to play politics with the issue of firearm ownership, hoping to score a few more rural votes by bashing around what they want to perceive as the “big bad wolf” of Chicago.

Why else would Republican presidential hopeful John McCain have bothered to bring up the issue on Thursday, praising the Supreme Court’s ruling and reminding people that his likely opponent, Barack Obama, hails from Chicago.

It’s probably just a matter of time before GOP aides remind us of ties between Obama and the Rev. Michael Pfleger, who has devoted years of his life as a priest to trying to fight the spread of firearms in his Gresham neighborhood parish and surrounding inner-city neighborhoods.

For his part, Mayor Richard M. Daley is bracing himself for a fight with the NRA, as he wants the courts to ultimately maintain the city’s gun sale ban. He is skeptical, as are many law enforcement personnel, that it is realistic to expect people to be able to protect themselves by allowing them to carry handguns on their person.

“DOES THIS LEAD to everyone having a gun in our society? If they think that’s the answer, then they’re greatly mistaken,” Daley told reporters. “Why don’t we do away with the court system and go back to the Old West? You have a gun and I have a gun and we’ll settle in the streets.”

Specifically of the Supreme Court’s action, Daley said, “They’re changing the rules. Why should we as a city not be able to protect ourselves from those who want guns in our society?”
Basically, Chicago is going to become a new legal battlefield for people who want to have the courts impose rules that somehow maintain a rural sensibility to this country – even though this country has long ceased to be urban-oriented (the typical American these days lives in a suburb of a major city).

THAT IS WHY towns like Kennesaw, Ga. – the town that reacted to Morton Grove’s gun ownership ban by imposing its own law requiring all households to own at least one firearm – are just ridiculous.

Kennesaw officials like to spew statistics claiming their crime rate has declined. When one considers how small the population is in that Southern town, it doesn’t take much of a drop to create a large percentage decline in crime.

It also would mean that differing circumstances exist there than in Chicago. Trying to move Chicago more in the direction of Kennesaw is just misguided.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: The right-leaning Supreme Court’s elimination of the District of Columbia’s gun ordinances (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/06/23/ST2008062300649.html?hpid=topnews) are giving activists motivation to go after Chicago’s bans on handguns within city limits.

Chicago and San Francisco are getting ready to fight in court to keep their gun sales (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/washington/27React.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) restrictions in place.

Supporters of the handgun sales bans in Chicago want to believe that the now-invalid Washington, D.C. law (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/26/usa3) was so much stricter than what exists anywhere else that there will not be a large-scale legal effect by Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling.

The far right has been demonizing Rev. Michael Pfleger since before his comments about Hillary R. Clinton’s presidential campaign (http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2008/06/26/abcs-robin-roberts-ignores-radicalism-maverick-priest-pfleger), as he has long taken an active role in trying to fight the spread of firearms in the city from suburban gun dealers.