Are they serious? Any Chicagoans here?

In several stories I've read, convicted felons who were carrying guns and were arrested...weren't prosecuted for having a gun.

It amazes me that people wait for a state to allow them to be armed - the criminals all have guns. Why should a citizen have to pay $150 and wait months for "permission"?

Concealed carry won't improve things in Chicago. Their gun violence is pretty much limited to the south side ghettos. Few people on the north side care about what goes on down there because it doesn't affect anyone else. If you aren't from the neighborhood, you don't belong in the neighborhood. There are no attractions down there. No businesses you'd want to go to. Nothing but residential poverty.

The area around the Englewood and Roseland communities make up one of the most dangerous areas in North America. 50+ people are often shot on weekends during the summer. If you are born into that area you are doomed to a life of poverty. Almost nobody gets out unless it's for a trip to prison or in a body bag.

How do you think it got that way?

- Sending in the National Guard is going to solve nothing. Our own armed services can't even discharge a weapon in hostile territory unless they are being shot at. And going into houses w/ out a search warrant would be going against our own Constitution. (Of course that hasn't stopped us as of late.) And there's no way our "Community Organizer" -in-chief is going to see his "Community" turn into a police state.

Let's not forget, that they've already done this once in Boston, and it took them 24 hours for an entire army to find one person. Good luck hunting down a gang that happens to live in amongst regular citizens.

Not sure about your area, but outright stealing by gangs is not as common as it used to be out here on the Left Coast. Too risky. Most of the gang money is made from drug dealing, extortion, prostitution, human trafficking, illegal alien smuggling, counterfeiting, identity theft, etc.

Which lawmakers are you talking about? I've seen no proposed legislation coming through to abolish the second amendment and ban guns. There have been proposals for limits on magazine capacity, none of which have gotten very far. Too bad in my opinion. Makes it so much easier for people to go to crowded theaters and schools and do maximum damage with high capacity magazines. There's also been some proposals to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill via background checks. Sounds like a good idea to me to keep deranged people unarmed, but it won't gain any traction either in this gun obsessed country.

Chicago's laws have changed. They eliminated the registration requirement in Chicago.

Chicago Gun Registry, In Place Since 1968, Abolished In Victory For Gun Groups

Well, I certainly hope that people come up with a better solution than arm every idiot. Sounds like the NRA's method of promoting the gun manufacturer's. Give every idiot a gun and everything will be alright.

Doesn't matter if they're violent or mentally ill. Give them a gun.

I grew up with guns. Assault weapons to be exact. My father is a national champion several times over of the National Rifle Matches which use military weapons for the matches. He then became one of the country's top custom gunsmiths for those same guns. He's been a federally licensed firearms dealer for many years.

He also has a concealed carry license which he's never used and has little interest in.

Would I want everyone's house to house the arsenal that the houses I grew up in have? Hell no. There are people who should NEVER have a gun, and that is only too obvious when dozens of small children get blown to bits in a school by some deranged asshole with a gun or people get blasted while trying to watch a movie in a theater and having high capacity magazines for those guns allows maximum kill.

Do you know who showed up in our yard a few weeks before the Oklahoma City bombing to buy a gun?

Timothy McVeigh

Did my father sell him a gun?

Hell NO. He was obviously deranged. No background check needed. The only reason he left then without killing someone is because there were more males in the house than he counted on. He went off ranting that we'd see soon. In the news.

I'm sorry ... but everyone should have a gun is not the answer to the problems in a city with a high crime rate.

Actually they found no one.
It was guy who owned the boat he was hiding in that found him

What's the core cause of the problem?
Maybe lack of jobs, high taxes?
Poor education system?
A high murder rate and gangs are the result of something.

... particularly when there is no restriction on magazine size and you can point and click 20 people into oblivion at semi-automatic speed before having to reload.

Actually as of 2010 our homicide rate was 4.8 per thousand and has been declining for about twenty years.

Specifically what disorders do you believe are made up and do not require meds?

And I call BS on your unfounded assessment that most of these murders are the result of psychotropic drugs. Of course, guns nuts would prefer that big bad old pharma killed all those people rather than a bunch of deranged gun nuts, but show me the proof.

Jared Lee Loughner. Street drug user. Schizophrenic not on medication. Was treated in jail for the schizophrenia so that he was lucid enough to stand trial. pleaded guilty to 19 charges of murder and attempted murder in connection with the shooting in Tucson, Arizona, on January 8, 2011, in which he shot and severely injured U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, his target, and killed six people, including Chief U.S. District Court Judge John Roll, as well as a 9-year-old girl, Christina-Taylor Green. Loughner shot and injured 12 other people, and one man was injured while subduing him.

Adam Lanza: May have had autism (but not on any treatment) and lived with gun nut mother who collected assault weapons. The predatory aggression demonstrated by Lanza in this rampage is generally not seen in the autistic population. fatally shot twenty children and six adult staff members in a mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the village of Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut. Before driving to the school, Lanza shot and killed his mother Nancy at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

James Eagan Holmes: Seen by a mental health professional a few times at school. Was not being treated and had not been diagnosed with anything, but the mental health professional thought he was dangerous. Did nothing about that. No hospitalization. Allegedly dangerously mentally ill, he still had no problem getting a Glock 22 pistol, and a Remington Model 870 shotgun and a Smith & Wesson M&P15 semi-automatic rifle, and a second Glock 22 pistol. All the weapons were bought legally.In the four months prior to the shooting, Holmes also bought 3000 rounds of ammunition for the pistols, 3000 rounds for the M&P15, and 350 shells for the shotgun over the Internet and he placed an order for a Blackhawk Urban Assault Vest, two magazine holders and a knife at an online retailer.

Maybe you should stop worrying about the big bad pharma and start worrying about how easy it is for mentally deranged individuals to get any freaking weapon they want.

You know, right after Sandy Hook, my father's phone started ringing off the wall, day and night. People wanted to buy guns and particularly, they wanted to hoard ammo. He doesn't sell ammo and he sells only highly specialized and very expensive M1Garands for National Match shooting, but the phone rang and rang and rang with people desperate to get as much ammo as they could because surely, after 20 innocents got blown to bits, mostly children, the government would curtail their access to ammo and guns.

Yeah, right. Of course that would happen. NOT. It sickened me. I hung up the phone on most of these crazies. People's who first reaction to a bunch of innocent children and adults getting shot to bits is to buy as much ammo as possible are among the most disgusting individuals I can think of.

So, you're saying that legally elected officials can't propose legislation to curb gun violence? Don't worry people. It doesn't work. Guns and the NRA always win. It didn't work in Colorado. There is the second amendment and no state can take away the rights of the second amendment and guess what? The second amendment doesn't distinguish between people who are criminally insane, drug users of any kind, gang members, hate group members, or just the average schmoe who wants a gun, so you can rest assured that your gun rights will remain intact no matter which category above you fit into.

I think the argument here would be that after they stole guns,
they would actually "have" them? :p

And, if there were less guns everywhere for people to steal,
then less of them would be stolen?


For me, the bottom line is that modern firearms just make it way
too easy to kill dozens of unsuspecting people within seconds...
And to keep doing it for several minutes, at least.

And the idea that more people with more guns would somehow
act as a prevention or even a deterrent? That might make sense,
if we were dealing with sane, rational people. I think we've
established that is not the case?

As for more people having guns so that they could take action
during any sudden outburst of violence, half of the people I know
can't keep track of their cellphone and car keys, and get stressed
or even panic at the thought of a call from an unexpected call
from a telemarketer or a bill collector... I don't feel safe driving
on the road around some of these people, never mind having
them carry around a tool that is specifically designed to kill humans!

What really gets me about all of it, though, is that so many people
are so fiercely against even trying something-- anything at all!--
to reduce what is so obviously a problem?

"One failed attempt at a shoe bomb and we all take off our shoes at the airport.
Thirty-one school shootings since Columbine and no change in our regulation of guns."
-John Oliver

LOL - wow, you mean you'd drop your kid off at a school where there's a known psycho with a gun loose before you'd drop your kid off at a well armed school? Yes - we'll definitely disagree on that one - sheesh.

And no I'm not an "NRA Shill" - I'm a 2nd amendment shill - or in other words - an American.

So far a vast majority of gun violence happens in gun-restrictive zones, and in gun restrictive cities. In other words it's happening in places that are actually going against those supreme court rulings I referenced above.

You either have to ban all guns - or you have to leave off restrictions. It's this in-between state that's getting us into trouble. It's these restrictions that are preventing people from protecting themselves from the crazies that get a hold of a gun. And I think based on what's happened over the last few years that you'll never garner enough support to ban all guns, so you have to give people the constitutional right to protect themselves.

- And by the way, this conversation isn't about being able to arm ourselves with a bazillion assault riffles - The OP was about what's happening in Chicago and having the constitutional right to bear arms to protect ourselves. And according to the constitution and backed up very recently by the supreme court, we have the right to arm ourselves accordingly to protect ourselves. So whatever a gang member might have - I have every right to own arms that would protect me from that.

You under-estimate the power that comes from a people fighting for freedom. Ask the Afghans. They have very rudimentary weapons for the most part compared to our military - and yet they've been giving us hell for years. Plus they've also held off the Russians.

And why do you think the 2nd amendment was written in the first place? The original "right to bear arms" was originally written into the English bill of rights in 1689 - as the result of an uprising by a tyrannical monarchy. One where the people could not fight back because the monarchy disarmed them all.

Your premise is disingenuous, because no one is arguing to own those things, so that's not really the middle ground. - I'm talking about restrictions against owning ANY arms reasonable or otherwise that prevent you from protecting yourself from invasions foreign or domestic - and the Supreme Court agrees. Read their decisions I posted above.

Oh, there are quite a few other factors there as well. If that was a real war,
it would have been over in a week.

Civilians standing up to the US government end up more like Vernon Howell.


Bazookas & missiles have more to do with trying to defend yourself
against the US gov than thugs in Chicago. Still there is a point to be made
out of it: Civilians don't need a thousand Rounds of ammo for
"self defense" reasons any more than they need military grade weapons.

Every person should absolutely have a Right to firearms for self-defense,
should they choose that they need one. But really, who needs an AR-15
and 500 Rounds of ammo for "self defense"?