I heard that recently Illinois Governor Pat Quinn (who inherited his job when Rod Blagojevick was impeached) has been trying to get a referendum question on the ballot for this November that reads:
"Shall the Governor and the members of the Illinois General Assembly enact legislation to ban the sale of semi-automatic and assault weapons that are used by criminals to threaten the lives of law enforcement and the people of Illinois?”First off, a couple things about the actual wording. It must have been crafted by one of those polling organizations to be something insidious that seems innocuous. And notice how it lumps together a simple semi-automatic weapon and an assault weapon.
I doubt anyone wants criminals to have weapons that kill law enforcement or anyone else. But this question is about banning the sale to everyone, not just criminals. Well, I'm sure almost everyone. I bet Gov. Quinn's State Police protection details will still have them. And Mayor Daly's Chicago Police protection detail. And any other politicion or influential person who can get pretty much whatever they want anyway.
So, basically it is just the ordinary citizen of Illinois that will not be able to have these. And of course the criminals. After all, we don't want these criminals to walk in to their local gun store and purchase these. Oh wait, I forgot. Since over 65% of felony arrests are repeat offenders, most of them are already prohibited from owning a weapon of any kind any way. By Illinois law, and federal law.
So since criminals can't actually buy their weapons retail, we will have to try to get the gang bangers who are selling guns out of their trunks on the street corner to abide by this new referendum. Thank goodness that THIS law will finally get these illegal gun sellers to pay attention, rather than the myriad of state and federal laws already on the books that they are currently ignoring.
We all know that laws only affect the law-abiding citizen. By definition, the criminal element DOES NOT pay attention to laws. Otherwise they wouldn't be criminals. So the ultimate purpose of a law like this, should it take effect, would be to deny the law abiding citizen the most commonly used firearm for self-defense purposes. Of yeah, how about a huge number of weapons that are used for hunting, target shooting and other recreation. All those would not be for sale in Illinois any more.
We don't need another horribly restrictive law on the books that will do no real good in combating crime. We need to enforce the ones we have. In fact, imagine what would happen if we actually identified the responsible citizens amongst us, investigated their background to make certain they didn't have any hidden criminal background, and actually gave them a license to own a weapon to protect themselves and others around them. Imagine a criminal not actually knowing for sure if the person they were about to victimize had a firearms or not. I bet they would quickly become much more selective in their choice of targets. Wouldn't that be nice?
Hey, wait a second, We already do that. It is called concealed carry permits, and 48 states in the country already allow this to one degree or another. And every time a state passed a law and entered in to the group, it saw a decrease in the incidence of violent crime. EVERY TIME. Even though there were predictions of blood running in the streets, which never happened. NEVER. Maybe it wasn't the guns, maybe it is just some type of coincidence. Maybe something else caused the decrease in crime, but a decrease occurred none the less.
Fortunately, this wrong-headed question will not be on the ballot this time. The petitioner needed 83,000 signatures of Cook County residents, and they fell well below that number. But they tried to proceed anyway, asking to move forward with the petition anyway. Fortunately, the Cook County Electoral Board listened to arguments against this petition, and rejected the petition on August 20th.
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