The State of Illinois recently complied with US Courts which overturned any law that was a ban on conceal carry of weapons. Illinois not only didn’t allow conceal carry, they outlawed all carry of a loaded handgun.
The City of Chicago had close to an outright ban – you could not carry a gun outside your home even if you went through the cumbersome and expensive Fire Owner ID (FOID), registration of individual guns with the City, and the longest required course in gun safety training. Taking the course was difficult as there is no place within the city licensed as a firing range, no legal firearms dealers and the course requires live fire training. That would mean to comply with the law, you had to rent a gun in the suburbs or transport your legal gun with the very stringent rules to put the gun in the trunk of your car with the gun and the ammunition in separate cases. A large portion of people in the city don’t own a car.
People licensed legally to carry in Illinois would then be in violation of Chicago’s laws if they crossed into the city limits. A person with a state conceal carry permit who moved to Chicago could carry concealed only if they stayed inside their own house. It’s a legal mess.
The City Coucil has repealed at least some of their folly in trying to reduce violence by keeping guns out of the hands of responsible people. Things are looking up. To try to still sound tough, restaurants that serve alcohol must ban guns on their premises, exceeding the state law whuch only applies to bars.
This story has gotten no coverage by the AP and only minimal national coverage, in the same week two Colorado state Senators were recalled for their role in Colorado’s “let’s ban everything” scattershot gun control changes
Always interesting. I used to live in southern GA in a town where everyone carried a gun. I even played cards occasionally with the Chief of Police. Crime? Not so much – Drunk driving and the occasional theft. No guns – plenty of crime. Right, Chicago?
The state still gave the State Police 6 months to create the process to issue conceal carry permits. Maybe they were hoping for some court to change things.
They also apparently increased the seriousness of crimes committed with guns – hopefully that is focused on crimes where a gun was actively used in the commission of another crime, not merely that a gun was present or paperwork violations (“you moved and didn’t update your FOID address)
One thing North Carolina was talking about doing but backed away from – was making gun registrations sealed so you wouldn’t have a situation like the NY newspaper putting the database online.
It’s kind of amusing – when I make open ended statements like “so I hear the state passed a bunch of new laws”, without exception (my relatives, Tom Taylor, my real estate agent) become very apologetic about those out of control Republicans passing crazy laws in secret (like requiring showing photo ID to vote) – when that’s exactly why I’m suddenly interested in moving there 😉
The Secret Services came to check out my home town/county in NW Pennsylvania on the first day of doe season once…. they had a full on fit with all the truck gun racks / people walking around with long guns (broken) most roads in and out of town trucks just pulled over on the berm for hunters. Out of touch, paper pushing city slickers.
I’m mostly a city slicker 😉
It was something of an education when I moved to Lansing Michigan and the PBS station had a hunting show – the high point of the year was all the pictures of deer hanging from the deer pole. My only beef with the hunting is the state’s involvement in “managing” the harvest as a tourist attraction – paying farmers to grow corn and not harvest it, putting out salt licks, etc
During the rest if the year, the host was involved in trying to change laws to allow legally blind people to hunt, and later people in wheelchairs being able to shoot deer from a vehicle, etc
They should fund a light rail project so that the seeing impaired and mobility challenged can shoot from the back of a train.
Here is a good one
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-09-16/i-am-no-constitutional-scholar