How can a city that bans handguns lead the nation in murders?

[ericire12]

http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=122301

You cannot legally buy a handgun in Chicago, the nation’s most murderous city.

You can own one, but only if you’ve owned it since before 1982 and you register it every year with the Chicago Police Department.

Gun-control advocates and gun-rights advocates don’t – or can’t – agree on how a city with a handgun ban can lead the nation in murders.

To proponents of owning guns it means the ban doesn’t work.

“Laws are only for law-abiding citizens anyway,” said John Riggio, owner of Chuck’s Gun Shop and Pistol Range in Riverdale. “Criminals by definition don’t follow the law.”

To proponents of regulating guns it means the ban isn’t big enough.

“Gun control opponents like to look at Chicago and say, ‘They have a handgun ban and look at all their murders,’ but I think, frankly, that’s ignorant,” said Thomas Mennard, executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence.

“They’re not taking into account that you can get handguns just outside of Chicago.”

At city's edge

Indiana Avenue cuts a straight line south from the Calumet Water Reclamation Plant into Riverdale, past a row of boarded-up and abandoned buildings.

At 143rd Street, on the right, sits Chuck’s Gun Shop, one of the closest places to legally buy a handgun outside Chicago’s city limits.

A trip to Chuck’s on a recent weekday morning saw nearly 30 patrons walk through the door in the space of an hour. They were there for guns. Trade-in, apply for, shop or rent – it’s all available at Chuck’s.

In 2006 Chuck’s won the Dealer Recruiter of the Year Award from the National Rifle Association for getting the most patrons to join the National Rifle Association.

Employees wear handguns in hip holsters, and before they’ll let customers see or touch anything, they ask to see their Firearm Owner’s Identification card.

According to Illinois law, anyone who owns or wants to own a firearm must apply for a “gun card,” as the FOID is commonly known.

Once approved for a card, there’s a 72-hour waiting period from the time you buy a handgun to the time you can pick it up.

You can buy as many guns as you want at once, but at Chuck’s you can only take possession of one every 31 days, a Riverdale law.

Most of the customers are blue collar, Riggio said, and most of his business is in handgun sales.

Riggio said he doubts there is any relationship between guns and gun violence.

“I would think there’s no relationship at all,” Riggio said. “Ever seen a gun shoot by itself? I haven’t.”
Riggio declined to provide shop sales figures and demurred when asked whether the Chicago handgun ban has any effect on his business.

“I don’t know if it has an effect one way or another,” Riggio said. “I just follow the law.”

The Law

Chicago passed its handgun ban nearly 27 years ago, on April 9, 1982. In the wake of a 2008 Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, its legality is being challenged.

After the Supreme Court decided that a federal district could not prohibit handguns, the NRA and the Illinois Sate Rifle Association challenged the Chicago ban. A circuit court judge dismissed the suit but it is currently on appeal before the 7th Circuit.

Jennifer Hoyle, director of public affairs for the city’s law department, said that until the courts say otherwise, the city’s handgun ban will remain in effect.

“There have been no changes and it is still being enforced,” Hoyle said.

Springfield is currently abuzz with gun talk. Gun control advocates traveled to Springfield last week. March 11 is Illinois Gun Owner’s Lobby Day. And several bills are under consideration.

One mandates background checks in private gun sales, which currently don’t require them. Another prohibits sales of multiple handguns to one person within a 30-day period. A third bans assault weapons.

The Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, which lists gun violence as one of its six priority issues, chooses not to take sides in the debate over gun control.

“What we are in favor of,” spokesman Charlie Boesel said, “is a reduction in gun violence.”

Challenges

The Joyce Foundation offers grant money to groups looking to study the problem or with ideas on how to address it.

“We are very concerned about gun violence in Chicago,” Joyce Foundation gun violence senior program officer Nina Vinik said. “We’re based here so it’s a hometown issue for us.”

According to a new study released this week by the University of Chicago Crime Lab, which received funding from the Joyce Foundation, gun violence costs Chicago taxpayers $2.5 billion a year, the equivalent of $2,500 per household.

That’s aside from the emotional costs that victims and their families must bear.

The study also found that, too often, programs that seek to address gun violence lack the kind of rigorous documentation and analysis that policymakers need and that the medical community expects.

“One of the frustrating things is that the criminal justice system has for many, many years been trying programs to address gun violence, but when you go ask them what works and for whom, there’s very little data,” said Harold Pollack, co-director of the Crime Lab and a public health researcher who worked on the study.

Strategies

There’s no shortage of people working on the problem, and the Crime Lab offers anyone with an idea the chance to get it rigorously tested.

Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor at Saint Sabina’s Catholic Church in Chicago’s Auburn Gresham neighborhood, organizes gun drives and runs the Do You Care? intervention program to teach young people ways to resolve conflicts nonviolently.

He sees the problem as largely a cultural one.

“Kids are armed with guns because it has become part of the wardrobe in America,” Pfleger said.

“I’ve never been at a high school in the last year and asked if they needed to get a gun whether they knew where to get one and not had at least 75 percent of the student body raise their hand.”

Pfleger said the challenge is to create an atmosphere in cities that doesn’t tolerate gun shootings.

“You shoot one of our children, we’re going to put a bounty on your head,” Pfleger said.

Law enforcement has its own ways of approaching gun violence.

Former Chicago police officer and Cook County state’s attorney John Armellino suggests crime has much to do with financial destitution.

“Crime is really a function of economics,” Armellino said. “It is a function of poverty. Turf wars are fights over money. Whoever’s got the more lucrative corner to sell drugs is going to protect it.”

The majority of guns used in crimes in Chicago come from Illinois, according the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

“We are our own worst enemies as a dealer state,” said special agent Thomas Ahern, spokesman for the Chicago field division, which covers all of Illinois.

“One of the primary missions of the Chicago field division is to stem the flow of guns coming into Chicago,” Ahern said.

Both the mayor’s office of criminal justice and the Chicago Police Department mentioned community policing as among the most important methods of combating gun violence.

“In my experience, the most organized communities have the best ability to change things,” said Sgt. John Delgado, a CAPS team leader for Chicago Police Department.

“My job is to make criminals uncomfortable. If the neighborhood is well-lit and clean and if people look out for each other and take pride in their property, the likelihood of criminals getting a foothold is greatly diminished,” Delgado said.

For Delgado, the discussions of gun control and gun violence at the state and federal levels mattered less than discussions that happen between neighbors.

“If the neighborhood doesn’t care,” Delgado said, “nothing’s going to change.”

[twyacht]

quote from article:

The majority of guns used in crimes in Chicago come from Illinois, according the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

WOW! What a Freakin' Genius we have in the BATF.

And who uses those "guns in crimes"?

CRIMINALS! NOT the majority of the victims hampered by BHO's hometown.....

Look at downtown Detroit, you want to see liberalism at its finest? Whole neighborhoods abandoned, average housing price? $7000.00. LEO's don't even bother patrolling some areas, just go with the coroner to clean up the bodies......because its a "health issue".

Just like sections outside Washington DC, some streets in Georgetown, not the Congressional Residence area with 24 hour ARMED SECURITY.

The section of Gtown that if your of a Caucasian persuasion, you wont make it 7 blocks.

[tt11758]

My job is to make criminals uncomfortable.

You want to make the predators uncomfortable?  Give the "prey" the means to defend themselves.  I wil guaran-friggin-tee you that not knowing who it's "safe" to victimize will make the vermin "uncomfortable".

Is it just me, or is this not exactly rocket science?!?

[tombogan03884]

You want to make the predators uncomfortable?  Give the "prey" the means to defend themselves.  I wil guaran-friggin-tee you that not knowing who it's "safe" to victimize will make the vermin "uncomfortable".

Is it just me, or is this not exactly rocket science?!?

It's COMMON SENSE, which they don't have.

[r_w]

Only the STUPID politicians don't get it, the rest know EXACTLY what they are doing

[Sponsor]

[ericire12]

Its important to note that all politicians are exempt from the gun ban laws.

[tt11758]

Its important to note that all politicians are exempt from the gun ban laws.

Any politicians who MIGHT be affected have their own armed security.

[AmericanGunOwner]

They, liberals and progressives, don't want us to have guns. They'll deal with the criminals when they get our guns. Don't worry about that. It's not about gun crime, it's about controlling the People. If this was about crime we'd be putting cops on the streets, enacting real gun laws that work - meaning less restrictions.  Really, I don't feel sorry for Illinois.  They vote this nut cases in they get what they vote for. Change is always an election away.

[Condition 1]

Talk to the people in Kennesaw, Georgia. Home owners by law have to own a firearm! If they cannot afford one the city of Kennesaw assists them in purchasing one. Crime with guns in Kennesaw is non-exsistant!![/i] [/color] When will the politians of this country wake up and smell the coffee? A gun carrying country is a much more polite country.

[tombogan03884]

Talk to the people in Kennesaw, Georgia. Home owners by law have to own a firearm! If they cannot afford one the city of Kennesaw assists them in purchasing one. Crime with guns in Kennesaw is non-exsistant!![/i] [/color] When will the politians of this country wake up and smell the coffee? A gun carrying country is a much more polite country.

Problem with that is ,in a country like that the politicians have to stay HONEST.
They are not trying to disarm us because THEY don't trust US, it's because WE can't trust THEM.