As the City of Chicago digests the news of today’s Olympics decision, we must not overlook the news that came out of Washington earlier this week that will directly impact our neighborhoods, with or without the Games.
The United States Supreme Court has agreed to review McDonald vs. City of Chicago, a case that challenges whether or not Chicago’s local handgun ban is legal. It is a development that deeply concerns me.
Since 1983, it has been illegal to purchase or own a handgun within Chicago’s city limits. Over the course of the 26 years since, Chicago has seen the number of registered handguns drop from more than 400,000 to fewer than 200,000. Guns have become scarcer, saving lives and creating safer neighborhoods in the process.
But the threat of gun violence has by no means dissipated. Chicago communities are still reeling from losses of neighbors, children and friends -- innocent bystanders caught by a stray bullet, someone in the wrong place at the wrong time. The last thing our city needs is more guns on the street and more children fearing for their safety.
In a Chicago Sun-Times survey from last year, Chicago elementary school students were asked their greatest fear.
The overwhelming answer: getting shot.
More than 500 students in Chicago were involved in a gun-related incident over the last two years, and four-fifths of Chicago homicide victims died from gunshot wounds It's not hard to understand why they're so scared.
According to the survey, half of fifth- through eighth-graders in Chicago know a friend or relative who has been shot at and more than a third know a friend or relative who has been shot to death.
A fourth-grader at Sexton Elementary School put into words what no statistics can:
“I would feel good if I lived in a different city,” she said. “I would not have to be scared to go outside.”
If the Supreme Court abides by its previous rulings on Second Amendment cases, it will honor the decision made in the McDonald case and allow the ruling to stand. There is a clear constitutional case to be made for upholding local and state laws on this matter.
In the 1939 case United States vs. Miller, the Supreme Court affirmed that the purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that states had a right to maintain militias free of interference from the Federal Government. While the Court’s recent 5-4 decision in the Court of the District of Columbia vs. Heller was hailed by the gun lobby as proof that this view had changed, the ruling actually affirmed that legal restrictions could be placed on individual gun ownership.
Furthermore, the court’s decision striking down the more restrictive portions of Washington, D.C.’s gun laws did not address the rights of states to place reasonable restrictions on gun ownership, as it only referred to acts of Congress. It would be tragically ironic if this amendment, enshrined in the Constitution in part to protect states from encroachment by the federal government, were used to take away the rights of Illinois citizens to decide whether guns belong in the hands of school children.
During my time in Washington, I have become increasingly frustrated by the power held by the gun lobby.
Legislation to finally give voting rights to the taxpaying citizens of the District of Columbia was derailed by an amendment that would have allowed unrestricted gun possession anywhere in the city, including elementary schools.
Critical reform on the credit card industry became law only with a compromise to allow concealed weapons in National Parks.
Congress refused to extend the Assault Weapons Ban, and when the ban expired in 2004, the number of deaths among children and teens from firearms increased for the first time since it was enacted in 1994. During a Judiciary Committee hearing I recently asked Attorney General Eric Holder if the Obama Administration would push for a renewal of this life-saving legislation. I stand ready to work with the administration to make this happen. But, in the absence of federal action, it is critical that we preserve the rights of the people of states and municipalities to protect their children at the local level.
How many more parents will lose a child, or children will lose a parent if we allow more weapons into our neighborhoods?
More than 500 students in Chicago were involved in a gun-related incident over the last two years. Will reversing this decision cause that number to reach 600? 700?
How much longer can we afford the estimated $2.5 billion a year we spend due to gun violence?
How many more families and dreams will be shattered at the barrel of a gun?
Can we continue to pay such hefty costs?
Our Founding Fathers drafted the Bill of Rights to ensure that We the People could determine how best to protect our communities. The people of Chicago have made it very clear that they favor sensible restrictions on gun ownership. It is up to the Supreme Court to abide by over 200 years of judicial precedent and allow the McDonald decision, and the laws of the City of Chicago, to stand.
Follow Mike Quigley on Twitter: www.twitter.com/repmikequigley
As the evidence shows, this is not true.
Were I making the claim that "More guns=less crime", Jade's red herring might have a point. Since I don't make that claim, yet advocates of the Chicago handgun ban make the claim that the ban directly caused any possible reductions in crime (which there isn't even any correlation to that), my numbers stand.
Let's use TP's faulty methodology on a different state: Louisiana. LA has very lax gun laws throughout the state and they don't vary much.
In 2006, there were 530 homicides in the state of LA; at that time the population of LA was almost 4.3M--meaning the per capita homicide rate was about 12.3.
In 2006, New Orleans there were 160 homicides out of a population of almost 213K for a per capita homicide rate of 75.2.
If we employ TP's magic disappearance and leap o' logic method--we see that if NOLA were to go away, the state's per capita homicide rate would decrease by about a percentage point to a little more than 11.3.
This points up the complete innumercay of TP's analysis. One, the gun laws throughout LA are just about uniform. Two, NOLA, while being LA's largest city, is not disproportionately weighted. Cities like Baton Rouge and Shreveport are very close to NOLA in terms of population.
JadeGold:"BTW, the population of Chicago is greater now than in '82."
Thirdpower: No, actually it isn't. In 1980, the population was a little over 3 million. The population as of 2008 is under 2.9 millions. A loss of over 100K people is not 'greater' except in the world of Jadegold who has claimed the city has 9.7 million people in it.
Reply Posted 04:05 AM on 10/11/2009
- + prayforroy
1980 census: Chicago population: 2,783,726
Today's Chicago pop: 2,842,518
Hmmm, let us pray.
Reply Posted 09:58 AM on 10/11/2009
- + Thirdpower I'm a Fan of Thirdpower I'm a fan of this user 37 fans permalink
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That's the 1990 census numbers Jade.
1990 /= 1980 except in your world.
And when presented w/ links to the US Census, he claimed they were wrong.
Illinois had a population of 12.85 million w/ a increased murder rate of 6.1/100K (790) in comparison to 5.9/100K last year.
Chicago had 22% of the population of Illinois yet accounted for 64.5% of murders w/ a per capita rate of 18/100K. an increase in murders both raw and per capita.
Cook County had 41% of the population of Illinois yet accounted for 73.9% of murders(584) w/ a per capita rate of 11.1/100K. It had a population drop yet an increase in murders due exclusively to Chicago.
The Cook County murders in raw number/per capita increased 11.9 and 11/1% respectively while arrest numbers and rates decreased compared to '07.
If Chicago were to fall into Lake Michigan, the Illinois murder rate would drop to 2.8 .
Were the rest of Cook County to follow suit, the rate would drop to 2.72 .
Yet instead we saw that increase. Now it's appearing that, in order to artificially reduce the murder rate from the disaster they saw in '08, they're increasingly classifying deaths as 'suicides'. All to continue to justify their ineffective gun ban.
Then there's the % of murders by types of weapons used, 2008:
Nationally: 66.9
Chicago: 80.8
TP has posted this comment--or a variation of this comment at least half a dozen times in this forum.
I wonder why since it's erroneous, misleading and depends on its audience not to have any knowledge of statistics.
First off, Chicago is easily the most populous city in IL. In point of fact, the next closest city in IL in terms of population is Aurora with a population of about 175K. To put it in perspective, Chicago is nearly 18X the size of Aurora.
Second, TP's analysis suffers from what is known as systemic bias. This means he compares Chicago and the rest of the state of IL as two distinct entities. He assumes all of non-Chicago IL is identical. This lack of identicality is easily exposed whe we compare homicide rates between various IL counties. We can easily see some counties have very, very low homicide rates and some have homicide rates that exceed Chicago's. Yet, TP attempts to treat all of non-Chicago IL as a homogenous entity. As a result, TPO induces biased selection into his analysis.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/table_20.html
Banning the most popular civilian centerfire rifles in the United States (many of which are made in Illinois), when rifles of any type are involved in only 2.6% of U.S. murders and 0.6% of Illinois murders annually, makes no objective sense.
FWIW, the 1994 Feinstein law did not, in fact, ban civilian AK lookalikes or AR-15 type rifles; on the contrary, it sharply increased their popularity, such that more were made/imported and sold between 1994 and 2004 than in the previous three decades combined. My own non-automatic civilian AK is a 2002 model.
Since Illinois remains in non-compliance w/ the FBI on crime reporting, the only comparable stat. is murder.
Nationally, the murder numbers/rate dropped from 16928/5.6 to 16272/5.4 from '07 to '08.
Illinois INCREASED from 752/5.9 to 790/6.1 . All due to the Brady Paradise of Chicago.
Chicago increased from 445/15.7 to 510 murders w/ a rate of 18/100k.
Dumping Chicago, Illinois would have seen a drop from 307/3.04 to 280 murders w/ a rate of 2.77.
Thanks Chicago. We're so glad to have you with us.
TP's "analysis" makes no sense.
If Illinois had a gun-lover's paradise such as New Orleans or Miami or Memphis as its major city, its murder rate would be much higher still. Thus, TP's "reasoning" crumbles away.
Additionally, TP ignores the fact that there are counties within Illinois that have murder rates equal to or higher than Chicago's. Why isn't TP blaming them? Oh, yeah...they don't have stricter gun laws.
He's fabricated crime numbers before as well as population numbers. Let's watch him do it again.
Chicago w/ its near complete ban on guns (unless you're an Alderman) has 5x the murder rate of the rest of the state.
500 gun-related incidents involving students is 500 too many. We simply must do better.
In my original post, I was clear that the handgun ban is not a solution by itself, but merely one aspect of a comprehensive effort that must include law enforcement and the community.
However, I will never concede that the answer to gun violence is more guns. That is exactly what will happen should the Supreme Court overturn the McDonald decision. For those that argue most of Chicago’s gun-violence comes from unregistered weapons obtained illegally, more guns—registered or unregistered—means a greater opportunity for deadly weapons to fall into the wrong hands.
I want to thank everyone from Chicago and beyond for contributing to this ongoing dialogue. Politics has always been a two-way conversation—between elected officials and those that elect them. I look forward to continuing that conversation.
When the law was passed in Chicago in 1982, there were over 800 homicides that year in Chicago. There are now fewer than 400. BTW, the population of Chicago is greater now than in '82.
Also it is simply niave to assume crime will increase if (hopefully when) the ban, crime will increase. Washington's political anti-gun hacks made the same chicken little claims after the Heller verdict, yet one year later they have failed to cite any significant increase in crime.
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-quigley/gunning-for-chicago_b_307672.html
This is a joke, right?
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/table_20.html
Nationwide, rifle crime has in fact continued to decline since 2004. Rifles accounted for 2.6% of U.S. murders last year, down from 3.0% in 2007.
Rifles, regardless of whether the handgrip and magazine stick out, are not a significant crime problem in the United States and never have been. One could be excused for believing the MSM hyperbole on the topic, though.
http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2009/09/gun-possession-safety/index.html
PHILADELPHIA – In a first-of its-kind study, epidemiologists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that, on average, guns did not protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault. The study estimated that people with a gun were 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun.
False.
Where do criminals get their guns? They're not making them at home. They don't magically appear. They get their guns via many of the same channels as so-called law-abiding citizens. Thus, if you open those channels--you are bound to see more guns wind up in the hands of criminals. Thanks to the NRA, anyone with a criminal record (assuming no felonies) can legally purchase guns and then turn around and sell those weapons to any criminal--felonious or otherwise.
FFLs have been known to turn a blind eye to selling to criminals.
Criminals also get guns by stealing them. More guns means more opportunities for theft.
"Where do criminals get their guns? They're not making them at home. "
Actually in the early 1990s a study of firearms recovered in DC showed up to 20% were "home made".
"They get their guns via many of the same channels as so-called law-abiding citizens."
Law abiding citizens don't steal firearms.
"Thanks to the NRA, anyone with a criminal record (assuming no felonies) can legally purchase guns"
Where you came up with that gem it truly baffling.
"FFLs have been known to turn a blind eye to selling to criminals."
Very, very few FFLs.
"Actually in the early 1990s a study of firearms recovered in DC showed up to 20% were "home made". "
Not exactly. This is an embellishment often-cited on pro-gun blogs. They usually don't post any attribution. I have done the heavy lifting. What's being referred to here is a 1977 BATF Analysis of Operation CUE (Concentrated Urban Enforcement, interim report (Washington D.C.: February 15, 1977), pp. 133-34. This 1977 interim report stated that as many as one-fifth of recovered crime firearms were homemade or had homemade modifications. In 1986, Richard Gardiner and Paul Blackman of the NRA misrespresented this 1977 interim report to say 20% of the guns were homemade. As a result, pro-gun hacks like David Kopel and Walter Williams have repeated the NRA's dishonest interpretation and also claimed the report was written by the BATF in 1986.
"Where you came up with that gem it truly baffling. "
One need only pay attention to recent news. The charming fellow in Minnesota who felt the need to carry firearms when the President visited the state had 9 convictions under his belt.
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-quigley/gunning-for-chicago_b_307672.html
That just the thing Mike. Eliminating the handgun ban won't do any more to put guns on the street, than the ban did to take guns off the street (which is to say not at all). It will enable people to have a gun in their home. The state of Illinois does not allow for carry of guns, openly or concealed.
The street is already full of guns, despite the ban, and I don't see that ever changing.