Kurt Hofmann
Even in the wake of McDonald v. City of Chicago, in which the Supreme Court required the city to repeal its draconian handgun ban, Chicago has perhaps the most restrictive gun laws in the U.S. The Chicago Reader provides a partial list of what is required of Chicago gun owners:
The city ordinance remains one of the strictest in the country. It allows gun registrations, but limits possession to the home and requires owners to undergo classroom training, travel outside the city for time on a range, and submit to a third background check (two were already required under state law).
To those who believe that guns=violence, and “gun control”=crime control, this probably sounds like just the kind of “common sense” gun regulation that will keep people safe. Umm . . . not so much. From the Illinios State Rifle Association (ISRA):
For the second weekend in a row, visitors to Chicago’s posh Gold Coast were terrorized by so-called “flash mobs.” For the uninitiated, a “flash mob” is a violent group of dozens of young people who are directed to specific locations by smart phones or social media sites for the purpose of robbing and beating unsuspecting citizens.
On Memorial Day, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ordered the very popular North Avenue Beach closed. Although the official position of the city was that it was “too hot” for people to be on the beach, indications are that the beach was closed because a flash mob was roaming the lakefront attacking unwary beachgoers.
The numerous victims included a 68-year-old man who was beaten and robbed, despite being in what would normally be considered a “good” part of town.
The Wall Street Journal tells us to expect more of the same this coming weekend:
Police here are girding for another weekend of “flash mob” attacks after arresting 29 people in connection with a recent rash of assaults and robberies in and around the city’s tony shopping and dining district.
Twelve crimes involving large groups of young men were reported last weekend, in addition to others earlier this spring. The incidents are some of the first major problems confronting newly appointed Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy.
If, by the way, defensive handgun carry were legal in Chicago (and, for that matter, the rest of Illinois), Cook County’s ban of “assault weapons” casts a very wide net, and of course outlaws magazines capable of holding 11 or more rounds of ammunition. Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) tells us that the “only reason to have 33 bullets loaded in a handgun is to kill a lot of people very quickly” (and doesn’t explain why law enforcement officers, and even retired law enforcement officers, should need to engage in the kind of wholesale slaughter the exemptions in his S. 32 magazine ban bill is evidently intended to enable). One would think that having 20 or more rounds of ammunition immediately at hand would be comforting when swarmed by 20 or more savage thugs, but the Senator and those who enable his usurpations apparently disagree.
During his presidential campaign, then-candidate Obama said about “gun control,” that “what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne.” Perhaps he needs to reassess how well Chicago’s “solutions” are working there, too, and perhaps in the course of that reassessment, he should ask Chicago’s tourism industry.
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Kurt Hofmann
A former paratrooper, Kurt Hofmann was paralyzed in a car accident in 2002. The helplessness inherent to confinement to a wheelchair prompted him…
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‘Flash mobs’: What ‘works’ in Chicago? added by Vincent on
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