Another small Gun Rights victory - this time Chicago

[Virendra S Rathore]

Chicago Gun Laws have been gutted by City Council

During the proceedings, there was some arguments between Burke and Vandermyde, the city mandate that requires gun owners to secure their weapons with trigger locks or in safes if the firearm is “not on their person” and they have someone under the age of 18 in the home.

“Do you think a 75-year-old woman should be forced to carry her .38 around on her hip in her home every minute she’s in her home because the grandkids are there?” Vandermyde asked.

“So you’re against an ordinance that mandates, if you have a gun in your house, it ought to be secure. …You oppose an ordinance that tries to increase safety in the homes in Chicago?” Burke, the author and sponsor of the trigger-lock ordinance, asked.

Vandermyde shot back, “We don’t oppose safety measures by and large. But we see these as being impediments to the lawful use of self-defense. For 30 years your city did not allow somebody to have a handgun in their own home for self-defense.”

“It’s common sense that you have a trigger lock on a weapon that’s in your house where you have minors,” said Public Safety Committee Chairman Jim Balcer, as reported by the Chicago Sun-Times. “That minor can pick up that weapon, hurt themselves, hurt someone else.”

My opinion is that it’s more “common sense” to teach kids gun safety and to effectively use firearms from an early age. This takes foolish curiosity out of the child and helps them to understand how they are to be used and that they are not toys. How can I say this? I’ve done it with each one of my kids when they are young, and I have no problems of them going around and trying to get guns. My children treat each firearm as if it’s loaded, because it is, and they come to me and ask to go and shoot them.

So, while the anti-gun crowd wants you to be armed with a gun that has a trigger lock or no gun at all, I suggest education. That is the real common sense approach.

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2013/09/09/ ... -gun-laws/

CHICAGO (CBS) — A Chicago City Council Committee has approved a rewrite of the City’s gun laws that has both gun control and gun rights advocates claiming victory, reports WBBM Political Editor Craig Dellimore.

The ordinance headed for a full City Council vote Wednesday brings City gun laws in line with the state’s law allowing carrying of concealed weapons.
National Rifle Association spokesman Todd Vandermyde call this a red-letter day.
“Mayor Daley’s pinnacle handgun ordinance … is now for all intents and purposes gutted, and I think that is a great day for gun owners in the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois,” said Vandermyde.

The number of Chicago gun laws will be cut in half. The action was needed to bring the city in line with the rest of Illinois, as a result of the recently passed statewide concealed carry gun law.
Chicago had the toughest gun laws in Illinois.
Today’s action is a victory “for the little guy who wants to keep a lawful gun in his home or a concealed handgun for protection,” said
Vandermyde, who tangled with powerful Ald. Ed Burke during the brief hearing.

Several of Burke’s signature gun safety bills will go away if the full Council votes yes.
“Does the NRA oppose common sense safety measures in the home?” Burke heatedly asked Vandermyde.

“No we don’t. We just think that decision should be left up to the individual,” Vandermyde responded.
Burke complained “the NRA will work to take away” all gun safety measures.

These items will be wiped from the city’s books if the full Council agrees:

• The registration of an owner’s guns
  Required 5 hours of training
  Transporting legal firearms can be prosecuted, vehicle impounded.
  Using a legal firearm for protection only within the four corners of your home
  Requiring trigger locks on guns in the home
  Ban on laser sights
  Ban on use of real firearms on stage or movie set

Still on the books is Chicago’s ban on military-style assault rifles and a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines.
The Emanuel Administration also is proposing “Safe Zones” on and around buses and trains.

The bill would increase jail time and fines for the use of illegal firearms there.

“As a city, we have a responsibility to protect riders of buses and trains, especially the many students who rely on the CTA as a key mode of transportation, from the dangers of gun violence. I am very pleased the Public Safety Committee has taken the next step in creating new Public Transportation Safety Zones and increasing penalties for serious weapon and gun-related offenses near bus stops, bus shelters and El stations and on buses and trains,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement.
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Regards,
Virendra

[timmy]

“It’s common sense that you have a trigger lock on a weapon that’s in your house where you have minors,” said Public Safety Committee Chairman Jim Balcer, as reported by the Chicago Sun-Times. “That minor can pick up that weapon, hurt themselves, hurt someone else.”

My opinion is that it’s more “common sense” to teach kids gun safety and to effectively use firearms from an early age. This takes foolish curiosity out of the child and helps them to understand how they are to be used and that they are not toys. How can I say this? I’ve done it with each one of my kids when they are young, and I have no problems of them going around and trying to get guns. My children treat each firearm as if it’s loaded, because it is, and they come to me and ask to go and shoot them.

So, while the anti-gun crowd wants you to be armed with a gun that has a trigger lock or no gun at all, I suggest education. That is the real common sense approach.

I totally agree!

What we have in Chicago, however, is that Michael Bloomberg mentality that operates according to the Fabian strategy: they work on promoting a "death of a thousand cuts," where so many laws are passed and lawsuits are used to harry legitimate businesses and organizations that gun ownership remains a constitutional right that nobody can, in reality, obtain.

Common sense is the enemy of this sort of thing, because the work of years of "good government," passing silly laws like preventing drug dealers and bank robbers from having long guns with bayonets clearly cannot protect anyone in general the public.

For years, guns were a part of the home and children were trained by parents not to play with them, just as children are taught not to play in the street or play with fire, and just as children and prevented by their parents from wielding kitchen knives when they are playing.

As I have said on these forums many times in the past, it used to be a weekend ritual in my house, when my children were young, that five or more guns would be scattered about the living room as I cleaned them after a session at the range. In all that time, I had only one incident:

My younger son was in the living room alone and when I came out of another room, I saw him staring closely at a .22 rifle standing in the corner. He got very close to it as I watched him silently from across the room. After a while, he turned and noticed me, but he wasn't startled. While looking at me, he held out his index finger and touched the gun quickly. He evidently wanted to know what I would do, which he quickly found out. I told him to ask his mother for the stick on top of the refrigerator and his bottom very soon conveyed the consequences of touching Daddy's gun without first having received permission.

Now that he is in his late 30s and has his own four children, he practices total safe gun manners with them, which he has taught them.

This is common sense -- dealing with things that require responsibility by education, rather than using flimsy excuses as a backdoor method of denying people their rights without cause, because of some silly set of social theories.

“Does the NRA oppose common sense safety measures in the home?” Burke heatedly asked Vandermyde.

“No we don’t. We just think that decision should be left up to the individual,” Vandermyde responded.
Burke complained “the NRA will work to take away” all gun safety measures.

...
Ban on use of real firearms on stage or movie set

This is a perfect example of silliness! Just how are home invasions, assaults, bank robberies, and terrorist acts prevented and the public made safer by requiring that movies be made with replica weapons that viewers cannot distinguish from the real thing?

Either the proponents of such silly laws are operating as I have accused them -- pursuing a Fabian method of depriving constitutional rights to gun ownership -- or they subscribe to some kind of belief, where the aural power of a real gun gets transmitted over the air waves or movie screens to the viewer and compels them to practice antisocial behavior!

Still on the books is Chicago’s ban on military-style assault rifles and a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines.
The Emanuel Administration also is proposing “Safe Zones” on and around buses and trains.

The bill would increase jail time and fines for the use of illegal firearms there.

“As a city, we have a responsibility to protect riders of buses and trains, especially the many students who rely on the CTA as a key mode of transportation, from the dangers of gun violence. I am very pleased the Public Safety Committee has taken the next step in creating new Public Transportation Safety Zones and increasing penalties for serious weapon and gun-related offenses near bus stops, bus shelters and El stations and on buses and trains,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement.

Given all the crime in a big city, I can just imagine the impact on public safety that would be caused by gangsters bringing FN FALs (perhaps even with bayonets!) on CTA trains and buses!

Truly, our public must be a bunch of lotus eaters to swallow such malarky and allow this silly reasoning to go unchallenged!

[Virendra S Rathore]

About the last part, that was for US timmy. Imagine how it is like in India. Debate itself is a taboo.