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Gun ban ruling has Chicago thinking...
oldemagics
Member Posts: 5,851 ✭✭✭
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/newssun/news/1027062,WA26_chigunban_s1.article
Gun ban ruling has Chicago thinking it's next
June 26, 2008Recommend (1)
BY DON BABWIN
CHICAGO (AP) -- As news spread of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision Thursday to strike down Washington D.C.'s handgun ban, one thing was clear in Chicago: The city's own ban now faces a challenge as serious as any in its 26-year history.
From a visibly angry Mayor Richard Daley to a pleased leader of a pro-gun group who openly threatened to hit the city with lawsuits if things don't change - and soon - there was no mistaking that the 64-page opinion puts Chicago's law in danger.
If there was any doubt, Justice Stephen Breyer erased it with a simple mention in his dissent that "Chicago has a law very similar to the District's."
"In the sense the Supreme Court has found this is an individual right to bear arms, we recognize this is a significant threat," said Jennifer Hoyle, spokeswoman for the city's law department. "It gives people an opening to challenge the ordinance in a way it hasn't been challenged in many years."
Hoyle said the high court's ruling does not invalidate Chicago's law because it does not apply to cities or states. And, she said, lawyers are confident they will be able to successfully fight off any legal challenge to the 1982 ordinance that makes it illegal to possess or sell handguns in the city.
"We have very strong legal arguments to make at every level of the courts," pointing out, for example, that the gun law constitutes a reasonable restriction for a densely populated urban area.
But Hoyle fully expects legal challenges to those arguments are coming.
She can count on it.
Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, said while his organization planned to give Chicago and other Illinois municipalities some time to change their laws, "If they don't, they'll be facing lawsuits."
That is welcome news to gun enthusiasts, who say laws like those in Chicago have chipped away at their rights.
"The justices just ruled today to uphold the Constitution," said Deb Gales, who owns Deb's Gun Range in Hammond, Ind., just across the state line from Chicago. "We all know that these anti-gun laws have been passed to the detriment of law-abiding citizens."
But all the talk of rights and legal challenges doesn't begin to explain what this ruling means at this moment in time in Chicago - a city shaken by gun violence for months.
Last spring saw a 16-year-old high school student shot and killed, and four fellow students injured, when someone sprayed bullets inside a bus they rode in the middle of the day. This spring saw a weekend during which nine people were killed in 36 shootings. The next week, five people were found shot to death inside a pillaged South Side home.
Chicago Public Schools officials say 27 students have been killed by gunfire since September. And just this week an 8-year-old boy was shot and seriously injured while riding in a van, a victim, police said, of his parents' gang and drug involvement.
"If hunters want to hunt, that's fine," schools CEO Arne Duncan said Thursday. "It's when adults hunt children, that's the problem."
Pamela Bosley lost her 18-year-old son two years ago, when a bullet from a handgun hit him as he helped a fellow student unload instruments outside a South Side Church.
"If you didn't have the guns, we'd still have our children," she said.
Annette Nance-Holt, the mother of 16-year-old Blair Holt, who was killed on the city bus last May, was livid Thursday.
"I'm still trying to figure out who we are more in love with, our children our guns," she said. "It's crazy. I'm safer being a deer knowing people are hunting you."
Daley was equally troubled by the ruling.
"It's a very frightening decision," said the longtime gun control proponent who routinely speaks out against guns, as he did after the fatal mass shootings at Northern Illinois University and a suburban women's clothing store. "We believe every mayor will be outraged by this."
The mayor criticized justices he said make decisions from behind the safe walls of a courthouse that put people outside those walls at risk.
"If you're an elected official, you feel safe. You cannot carry a gun into a federal building. You cannot carry a gun into a federal court," Daley said. "So, they're setting themselves aside."
Nance-Holt agreed.
"They live in safe neighborhoods," she said. They don't have this. Until it's their family member, they're going to keep voting that way."
Gun ban ruling has Chicago thinking it's next
June 26, 2008Recommend (1)
BY DON BABWIN
CHICAGO (AP) -- As news spread of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision Thursday to strike down Washington D.C.'s handgun ban, one thing was clear in Chicago: The city's own ban now faces a challenge as serious as any in its 26-year history.
From a visibly angry Mayor Richard Daley to a pleased leader of a pro-gun group who openly threatened to hit the city with lawsuits if things don't change - and soon - there was no mistaking that the 64-page opinion puts Chicago's law in danger.
If there was any doubt, Justice Stephen Breyer erased it with a simple mention in his dissent that "Chicago has a law very similar to the District's."
"In the sense the Supreme Court has found this is an individual right to bear arms, we recognize this is a significant threat," said Jennifer Hoyle, spokeswoman for the city's law department. "It gives people an opening to challenge the ordinance in a way it hasn't been challenged in many years."
Hoyle said the high court's ruling does not invalidate Chicago's law because it does not apply to cities or states. And, she said, lawyers are confident they will be able to successfully fight off any legal challenge to the 1982 ordinance that makes it illegal to possess or sell handguns in the city.
"We have very strong legal arguments to make at every level of the courts," pointing out, for example, that the gun law constitutes a reasonable restriction for a densely populated urban area.
But Hoyle fully expects legal challenges to those arguments are coming.
She can count on it.
Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, said while his organization planned to give Chicago and other Illinois municipalities some time to change their laws, "If they don't, they'll be facing lawsuits."
That is welcome news to gun enthusiasts, who say laws like those in Chicago have chipped away at their rights.
"The justices just ruled today to uphold the Constitution," said Deb Gales, who owns Deb's Gun Range in Hammond, Ind., just across the state line from Chicago. "We all know that these anti-gun laws have been passed to the detriment of law-abiding citizens."
But all the talk of rights and legal challenges doesn't begin to explain what this ruling means at this moment in time in Chicago - a city shaken by gun violence for months.
Last spring saw a 16-year-old high school student shot and killed, and four fellow students injured, when someone sprayed bullets inside a bus they rode in the middle of the day. This spring saw a weekend during which nine people were killed in 36 shootings. The next week, five people were found shot to death inside a pillaged South Side home.
Chicago Public Schools officials say 27 students have been killed by gunfire since September. And just this week an 8-year-old boy was shot and seriously injured while riding in a van, a victim, police said, of his parents' gang and drug involvement.
"If hunters want to hunt, that's fine," schools CEO Arne Duncan said Thursday. "It's when adults hunt children, that's the problem."
Pamela Bosley lost her 18-year-old son two years ago, when a bullet from a handgun hit him as he helped a fellow student unload instruments outside a South Side Church.
"If you didn't have the guns, we'd still have our children," she said.
Annette Nance-Holt, the mother of 16-year-old Blair Holt, who was killed on the city bus last May, was livid Thursday.
"I'm still trying to figure out who we are more in love with, our children our guns," she said. "It's crazy. I'm safer being a deer knowing people are hunting you."
Daley was equally troubled by the ruling.
"It's a very frightening decision," said the longtime gun control proponent who routinely speaks out against guns, as he did after the fatal mass shootings at Northern Illinois University and a suburban women's clothing store. "We believe every mayor will be outraged by this."
The mayor criticized justices he said make decisions from behind the safe walls of a courthouse that put people outside those walls at risk.
"If you're an elected official, you feel safe. You cannot carry a gun into a federal building. You cannot carry a gun into a federal court," Daley said. "So, they're setting themselves aside."
Nance-Holt agreed.
"They live in safe neighborhoods," she said. They don't have this. Until it's their family member, they're going to keep voting that way."
Comments
http://chicagorally.isra.org/
Gun owners rally
When?
July 11th, 2008
11am-1pm
Where?
James R. Thompson Center
100 W. Randolph St.
Chicago, IL 60601
Maybe that will be enough to burst a vessel. If you know any gun owner in Illinois let them know about the rally.
surely the mayor has security personel who are armed...ive even read on these forums somewhere that moyor daly and his cronies carry concealed.
so why would he critisise the justices for being safe behind their walls?
if he can have security provided for by the citys tax payers why cant everyone else?...and before anyone says they do, they have a police force, why isnt that good enough protection for the mayor and his mates?
with a bit of luck someone will take him to pieces in court...id like to see him cry.
But all the talk of rights and legal challenges doesn't begin to explain what this ruling means at this moment in time in Chicago - a city shaken by gun violence for months.
Last spring saw a 16-year-old high school student shot and killed, and four fellow students injured, when someone sprayed bullets inside a bus they rode in the middle of the day. This spring saw a weekend during which nine people were killed in 36 shootings. The next week, five people were found shot to death inside a pillaged South Side home.
Chicago Public Schools officials say 27 students have been killed by gunfire since September. And just this week an 8-year-old boy was shot and seriously injured while riding in a van, a victim, police said, of his parents' gang and drug involvement.
I don't see why Chicago is upset. It's obvious to me that the gun ban is working perfectly!