Chicago doesn't have an AW ban??

[Don Gwinn]

Possession of registered long guns (other than "assault weapons") is legal in Chicago, is it not?

 

[K-Romulus]

obligatory follow-up editorial

From the Chicago Tribune:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0603100127mar10,1,6476608,print.story

Corruption killed Starkesia Reed

Fear kept Washington officials from standing up to the NRA

By Ronald S. Safer

March 10, 2006

We are focused these days, and rightly so, on public officials whose self-serving acts of corruption victimize American citizens. All well and good--provided we don't lose sight of an equally insidious, equally intractable, equally endemic form of corruption: the corruption that killed Starkesia Reed, a 14-year-old freshman honor student at Chicago's Harper High School. You've read about Starkesia. She was struck down by a stray bullet from a high-powered assault weapon last Friday morning as she stood in the sanctity of her own home.

I don't absolve the killer who fired the weapon. I think I earned my anti-street-crime bona fides as a federal prosecutor. But the killer had a big assist from Congress and our president. In 2004, those so-called public servants let lapse the federal law that banned assault weapons like the one that evidently killed Starkesia. Tuesday's Tribune reported that law enforcement sources have concluded that the shooter sprayed 29 rounds, hitting seven other houses on the stretch of South Honore Street where Starkesia lived.

It is now lawful for companies to manufacture, sell and distribute these weapons. And it is lawful for a person to buy an assault weapon if he or she is not a felon.

Why did the president and Congress allow these weapons to again fill our streets?

Not because the law banning assault weapons was unpopular; poll after poll shows that the public favors gun control, particularly a ban on assault weapons.

Not because lawmakers and the president wanted to support law enforcement; most police unions and law enforcement organizations that spoke to the issue in 2004 favored renewing the ban. That made sense. Officers and agents are tired of being outgunned by criminals.

Not to protect the rights of hunters. I know of no deer or duck hunters who use assault rifles.

Not to allow people to protect their homes. It is the rare homeowner who goes to bed with an Uzi under his pillow.

And, most chilling, not because they didn't know that Starkesia Reed would have her precious life taken by one such weapon. They knew.

They did not know her lyrical name and they did not know the date: March 3, 2006. But they knew that legions of innocent children have been cut down in the crossfire of drive-by shootings.

Those drive-bys are precisely what these semi-automatic weapons--many of them convertible to automatic--are designed to execute. They're efficient, capable of quickly spraying a broad area with lethal bullets. Anyone in that area--an intended victim or a bystander like Starkesia--risks extermination.

Our elected officials in Washington, D.C., knew. They had to know. And they let it happen. Why?

Corruption. They weren't bribed by a gang. This corruption is more subtle. They were corrupted by fear. The National Rifle Association opposed the ban on assault weapons--just as it indiscriminately opposes any legislation to ban ammunition such as armor-piercing bullets that are designed to penetrate the supposedly bulletproof vests of law enforcement officers.

What do NRA leaders have that corrupts these politicians? Votes? Absolutely not. Their members are decidedly in the minority on the assault weapon issue.

They do, though, have money. Cold cash. And organization. They can withdraw the grease that lubricates the re-election machine of members of Congress. They can support a congressman's opponent with impressive resources. They are disciplined, single-issue-oriented and relentless in their opposition to anyone who has the audacity to suggest any weapon or ammunition controls be implemented.

I understand the politicians' concern. When I wrote an op-ed piece before the assault weapons ban lapsed, urging Congress to renew it, I received approximately 1,000 e-mails from NRA members. One was careless enough to attach the e-mail from an NRA leader who had forwarded my e-mail address to the organization's members and urged them to let me know how "alone" I was in my viewpoint.

The membership dutifully responded. Some of these e-mails were thoughtful and interesting. Some were threatening and criminal. (I concluded that the people who wrote the latter messages had skipped over the 1st Amendment to the Constitution in their haste to distort the 2nd. But I suspect they could name every member of the Simpson family.)

But remember, I am a harmless and powerless voice. I can only imagine the resources the NRA can train on those with the power to protect children like Starkesia against these weapons of slaughter.

Until we change our political system so that sound ideas rather than 30-second ads bought by private contributions decide our elections, we will have to rely on the courage of our elected officials to keep our children safe. I suppose even a brave lawmaker could ask, "What good would it do for me to act on this issue if it results in my being voted out of office and losing power?"

My response would be: "What good is being in office if it gives you the power to save the life of Starkesia Reed and all those who will tragically follow, yet you choose not to exercise it?"

That failure to act ratifies the corruption. The corruption that cost Starkesia Reed her young life.

----------

During the 1990s, then-Assistant U.S. Atty. Ronald S. Safer headed the Justice Department's prosecution of Chicago's Gangster Disciples.

 

[DonP]

My response (and their response)

The Sun Times and Tribune had virtually identical articles.

I wrote both papers and the writers they had listed. Surpisingly I got a quick and frankly honest response from one of the authors.

Here is my Letter:

Englewood Tragedy: Here we go again!

The recent deaths by gang gunfire of two young girls is tragic in any context. But to use these deaths to further an obvious political agenda, specifically gun control, is even more tragic and frankly disgusting.

Let me try and understand the point of view, regarding the tragic Englewood shootings, that caused a Sun Time report and an official police spokesperson both to "urge a weapons ban". By that they really mean another weapons ban, I'm sure.

Unless he's been in a cave for the last 20 years, the police spokesperson certainly knows that both of the weapons they are talking about in these crimes, the Tec-9 and the AK-47, have been banned and illegal in the City of Chicago for years. I'm going to go out on a limb here and bet that the gang shooters probably didn't have a valid FOID card either and didn't buy that gun at a Federal Firearms Licensed dealer and file a federal form 4473?

So how is another banning of another specific class of semi-automatic rifle, like the AR-15, commonly used for competitive long distance high-power competitive shooting in Illinois, and 49 other states, going to stop gang bangers from shooting up the streets of Englewood?

Are you so naive that you really think another law will somehow magically reduce the flow of weapons to street gangs? No, the price on each gun will go up a few hundred dollars, and so will the cost of the drugs they sell to their willing customers.

Or are you, "if it only saves one child's life" people? If that's your point of view, then you'd better ban 5 gallon buckets and backyard swimming pools. According to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta they account for far more children's deaths than firearms in this country, by a ratio of 7 to 1 or better.

The answer is that another gun ban, to put on top of the ones you already have in Chicago, will once again have no impact on the gang members that are already ignoring a host of laws, gun and otherwise, to control their drug territory. It will just give the politicians, cops and ministers another photo-op and make it difficult for a lot of law abiding folks south of I-80 to participate in a legal sport they enjoy.

Where's the demand to enforce the laws already on the books for guns and drug dealing, the demand for the community to turn in the gang members by name right now?

Here's a radical idea punish the people that actually committed the crime and focus community energy and anger on the criminal, not the particular tool they chose. It would be nice, just once, to hear a minister or other community spokesperson stand up after one of these tragedies and say, "People, our problem is not necessarily with the weapons that are brought into our community by these criminals. It is with the hard and uncaring hearts that we allowed to grow up among us, while we as a community ignored their need for direction and discipline". I'm not going to wait for that speech anytime soon.

The thousands of legal gun owners in Illinois are getting tired of seeing tired and trite gun control solutions proposed, almost weekly, to shootings that have a root cause in the community. Banning the specific guns will have zero impact on the drug trade at the base of this violence. For background see the 2004/2005 CDC study on gun control and it's impact on crime.

(The bottom line was the independent CDC determined that after 20 years of various Federal and Local gun control programs there was no measurable impact on crime.)



And here is the response I got from the article's author:

Hi Don,

Believe me, as the daughter of a card-carrying NRA member and competitive target shooter, I understand your position.

For what it's worth, I did hear members of the community express a lot of frustration about black on black violence, too. I tried to get some of that across in the story. Basically, what you had yesterday was a giant blame game. Cops were blamed. Guns were blamed. Gangs were blamed.

Anyway, I appreciate your taking the time to write. And you're always welcome to submit your views as a letter to the editor for publication.

Thanks,

 

[orionengnr]

Quote from the article...

"It is now lawful for companies to manufacture, sell and distribute these weapons. And it is lawful for a person to buy an assault weapon if he or she is not a felon."

I sure would like to see where that one could have gone.

 

[crazed_ss]

Does anyone ever find articles like this painful to read?

The ignorance is so amazing. Why cant we get an op-ed piece published to rebut things like this. Most of the stuff written in that article is twisting words or just plain incorrect.

People read this crap and have no choice but to believe it because no one has educated them about the truth.