Lift the firearm ban, Chicago
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of gun ownership today in the matter of District of Columbia v. Dick Heller, saying “The inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right.”
This has Chicago politicians all in a huff, because this will inevitably spawn challenges against a similar handgun ban that has been in place here for the past 26 years. Well I say “quit your fucking whining.”
As the old saying goes, if you criminalize guns, only criminals will have guns. It’s hard to argue with that. Making it illegal to own a gun only means that people who follow the law will stop owning guns. But for those who regularly scoff the law, a ban means nothing.
The Chicago Tribune quotes a related legal brief:
“Chicago, like other big cities, has a compelling interest in reducing crime related to firearms,” the brief states. ” Chicago Police Department statistics show that from 2004 to November 2007 there were 43,685 firearms-related violent crimes in the city.”
So by the city’s own police statistics admit that over an (admittedly ambiguous) period of approximately 3-4 years, there were 43,685 gun-related crimes committed in a city where gun ownership has been illegal for a two-and-one-half decades! We’re talking about somewhere between 10,000 and 14,000 per year!
This quotation mentions nothing of whether or not the victims in these crimes also owned firearms, but I’m willing to assert that they probably did not. Why? Because it’s usually the law-abiding citizen who is a victim, while it is criminals (by definition) who commit crimes.
Isn’t it easy to think that these criminals might have an inflated sense of bravado, knowing how strongly the odds suggest that whomever they point a gun at will probably be unarmed? And isn’t it also easy to imagine that they might think twice if they knew there was a good chance of their intended victim being armed and capable of defending him- or herself?
The way to reduce crime is not to ban guns, it’s to encourage them. Admittedly, this may initially result in some fatal escalations. But when the gang-bangers and the burglars realize that they don’t just have to be faster than the cops (they have to be faster than a speeding bullet!), they might reconsider their activities.
That’s my opinion. What’s yours?
June 28th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
So, your basic logic goes: give everybody a gun, and nobody will shoot anyone, because everybody will be afraid of getting shot.
Brilliant. I can’t even imagine how this wouldn’t work perfectly.
I apologize for my bluntness, but believing that encouraging the possession of firearms will promote safety isn’t any saner than believing that encouraging nuclear proliferation will help us avoid nuclear war. The logic is rooted in the idea of intimidation, a concept that has no place in a society interested in peace, and certainly shouldn’t be written into its laws.
There are years of data that make the link between high gun ownership levels and high homicide/suicide levels. It’s not a magical coincidence that the countries with the tightest gun laws (such as Japan) have extremely low gun death numbers, while the countries with the loosest (such as the U.S.) have extremely high ones.
Don’t get me wrong, in the case of the United States it’s not as simple as banning or not banning guns…as a country we’ve got some violence issues to work out. But, the idea that more guns = less crime is absurd, no matter how much we love Die Hard.
Opinions are opinions, and you’re entitled to yours, but I think a few minutes of Googlesweat might shed a little light on how ridiculous your position is.
June 28th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
While I appreciate your position (and I encourage disagreement), I can’t really take someone seriously when their rebuttal consists of sarcasm, name-calling, and unfounded claims. Particularly, if it would only take a few minutes on Google to find enough evidence to classify my position as “ridiculous”, then why didn’t you do it? Or at least include a link, or even just a search term that I should try.
Regarding the actual meat of your reply — the part in the middle, where you seem to be putting forward an actual opinion — I have to continue to disagree. The reason is that, like I said in my blog entry, when you make laws against gun ownership, you only take guns out of the hands of people who follow laws. If you’re trying to stop crime, however, the idea is to get the guns out of the hands of people who DON’T follow laws.
The only way a weapons ban can be effective is if the ban stops the flow of illegal guns. In a country like Japan, that might be easier to do. But in the United States, where production of firearms is a big economic force, I don’t think the same tactics would be effective. Frankly, I’d be happier in a world where NOBODY had guns, but I just don’t think that’s a realistic expectation in my lifetime.
Look, I agree that there are many other countries with significantly lower gun violence. But I think it’s a mistake to credit that to gun bans. The two may be only loosely related, or they may be completely unrelated. And since you haven’t done even a few minutes of Googlesweat, you can’t see how ridiculous your position is. ;-)
July 17th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
RANDEM you are completly right. i agree 100%. i think that the only idiots who oppose the ownership hand gun in chicago probbaly dont even live in the city.they are probbaly someone who has like a bodygard with a pistol i bet that they have never seen some one get shot never the less stabed over some thing as stupid as a wallet. since i actually live in the south side of chicago over by 65th and kedzie. you can not tell me that criminals are going to put down their hand guns down because of a law that was passed, the person that will have to put down their gun is the law abiding citizen. if you think that criminals will put their weapons down i think that you are pritty stupid.
but thats just my oppion
July 21st, 2008 at 6:34 pm
I live in the suburbs of Chicago (COOK county) and am inside the jurisdiction of the ridiculous gun ban. All though I cannot agree with everything you’ve said, I agree that taking guns away from everyday citizens is the wrong way to go. Yes criminals will always have access to guns no matter what the laws are and sorry to the nay sayers here but most of the time cops don’t know that the criminals have guns until they do something wrong, and that is a unacceptable risk. You can tell me that more guns will bring on more shootings, well, I say look at England, they have full gun bans and more knife deaths than you can care to imagine. I’m not going to say giving everyone a gun will solve violence. But I will say if you ever walk down your stairs with a bat in your hand while someone is breaking into your house, you will wish to god that the first thing you could honestly scream out were the words I’M ARMED! Believe me, I know that first hand and I spent the next day filling out the paperwork I needed to get my shotgun. Now as to why I can own a shotgun that can blow a hole the size of a basketball into something and not a small caliber handgun is beyond me. To anyone who says all guns should be banned I can honestly say this, If they ban all guns here, they will be either watching me move away or prying my gun from my hand full of rigor, because there is no way in hell I will ever experience something like that again and know that me and my family are not safe. We have a great system in place to make sure felons, violent criminals, people with mental problems, ect. do not have the legal right to own any gun. If you want to make things better, work on getting other states to coordinate that system instead of telling people you’ve taken away their rights.
July 26th, 2008 at 5:24 am
The simple fact is that burglars will not be as emboldened to break into homes if they know that homeowners may be armed. The criminals that terrorize our poorer communities will continue to have access to hand guns, it is the law abiding citizens who are being denied access. It would be ideal for us to not need guns in our homes to protect our families, but the reality is that we have one of two choices: prevention & protection, or victimization. I prefer the first. This is why I am supporting Antoine Members for U.S. Congress in IL 1st district. He believes in upholding the 2nd Ammendment.
Isaac C. Hayes
Political Director, Antoine Members for U.S. Congress
August 30th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
I am in full agreement with those that believe gun ownership, by an individual citizen living in Cook county, should be legal. While I wish there wasn’t a need for weapons of any kind, that sadly is not the case, statistics shows this all too well.
The only people who are discouraged from aquiring a handgun, are law abiding citizens, not the very criminals we are trying to prevent from having guns, the very same criminals we have a right to be able to defend ourselves against.
If there was no gun violence within the city limits, or at least a lot less than there currently is, then I would agree with the concept, but that clearly isn’t the case.
The way I see it, Cook county is denying rights guaranteed in the constituiton, and hopefully soon, we will get the law changed.
August 30th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
“Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis also criticized the decision. “From a law enforcement perspective, this will no doubt make a police officer’s job more challenging than it already is, particularly since a firearm is used in 75 percent of all murders committed in the city of Chicago,” Weis said.”
But how can that be, after all, handguns are outlawed in the city and only law abiding citizens are allowed to own “long” firearms.
Clearly, criminals have no problems aquiring weapons or using them in Cook county, but strangely, law abiding citizens are not allowed to! Seems very backwards to me.