Guns

Chicago Gun Ban’s Days Are Numbered

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Daley continues to unravel in a bizarre display of disintegration.

It’s early June and that means someday soon, the U.S. Supreme Court will issue decisions on cases it heard during its fall 2009 session.

Chief among them is McDonald v. City of Chicago, a challenge many legal pundits believe will result in a ruling that finds the city’s 37-year-old gun ban is unconstitutional.

Confronted with this pending reality, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley continues to unravel in what can only be described as one of the most bizarre displays of disintegration by a public official in generations.

Daley has already said he will continue the ban regardless of the ruling, and irrelevant of the glaring fact that it hasn’t prevented Chicago from becoming a modern-day Dodge City in leading the nation in gun violence — 509 homicides in 2009 alone.

Meanwhile, two events have shaken the city into realizing the futility of the gun ban.

On May 19, off duty police officer Thomas Wortham, recently returned from his second tour of duty in Iraq, visited his parents to show them his new motorcycle. Upon leaving, he was surrounded by thugs, demanding the motorcycle. One put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Wortham’s father, a retired cop, brought out his legal gun, killing one murderer and seriously wounding the other.

One week later, on May 26, an 80-year-old Korean War veteran shot and killed would-be home invader Anthony “Big Ant” Nelson, a 29-year-old thug with a 13-page rap sheet dating to 1998. As Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman wrote in their May 29 co-bylined column in the Chicago Sun Times, Nelson fired a shot from a handgun through the man’s bedroom window.

“Most likely to Nelson’s great, and terminal, surprise, the older man fired back, with his own handgun that almost certainly was not registered in the city. Had he followed the law, this gentleman, his wife, and possibly their 12-year-old grandson who was in the next room might all be dead right now,” Gottlieb and Workman wrote.

It’s unlikely the city will prosecute the man, but it has confiscated his handgun.

Daley’s response to all this? “Guns (sic) is not the answer.”

For more, go to:
Gun ban in Chicago;
In Chicago, another story of handguns and self defense;
Mayor Daley: ‘Guns is not the answer’;
Did You Hear the One about the Chicago Gun Ban?;
How to Distract a Press Corps;
Mayor Daley Shoots Down More Questions About Guns Without Answering Them;
As SCOTUS ruling on Chicago gun ban looms, one case defines gun control bankruptcy;
Mr. Mayor, your gun ban failed;
Gun Control Supporters Consider Breaking City’s Handgun Ban;
National Review: Pulling Chicago’s Gun Ban Trigger;
Wrestling with gun rights;
Attack on Chicago’s handgun ban could undo a winning police tactic;
The Second Amendment debate: Some reason needs to be applied;
Michael Hays: Targeting abuses of the Second Amendment;
Safer Streets 2010: Second amendment not revenge, but survival;
Mayor Bloombergis aims for new laws;
Daley and gun control: Genuine passion or phony baloney?;
Chicago gun ban isn’t working;
Lessons from Jamaicais Gun Violence;
Jamaica’s Bloody Lesson On Guns;
Latest FBI Crime Data Continues to Refute Anti-Gun Rhetoric;