Last week, after watching Illinois’ civilian disarmament bills die in committee, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel vowed to take action. “We can’t wait,” he pronounced, calculating the odds of a new, similar bill making it through the legislature and/or a federally legislated assault weapons and “high capacity magazine” ban. Well, the former White House Chief of Staff waited. He put off a promised press conference on his proposals for a gun control city ordinance, promising to unveil his plans at a City Council meeting next week. In the early minutes of this morning, Rahm’s plan for Chicago’s legal gun owners dropped . . .

Gun registration. And lots of it.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to broaden the requirement for reporting the loss, theft, sale or transfer of firearms to all gun owners in all of Cook County and double the jail time for an array of gun violations to stop the bloodbath on Chicago streets.

What the suntimes.com neglects to report: failing to keep a record of a firearms sale for ten years is, at the moment, a misdemeanor. Emanuel’s ordinance would extend that requirement to loss, theft and transfer. And make failing to keep a record a felony.

Under the scheme, if Chicago cops have a “reasonable suspicion” that a gun owner’s firearm isn’t properly documented, they can ask for the paperwork. If the owner doesn’t have it, or it fails to meet the government’s criteria, they will lose their gun, their gun rights, their freedom and some of their money.

Remember the old movies about the Nazis? “Show us your papers!” Like that.

Once again, Illinois is proving to be a bellwether in the post-Newtown rush to civilian disarmament. Noting that the state-level unconstitutional gun grab that died in committee was quietly replaced with a new gun ban bill (HB 132) on Friday, waiting for the legislature’s return.

The battle continues . . .

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48 COMMENTS

  1. “We had 1.5 homicides per day last year. It’s imperative that we do better in 2013. I expect maybe 2 or 3 would be good,” Rahm said in an unconfirmed email.

  2. I’m confused, and need some education. Why would somebody NOT report the loss, theft, or sale of his firearm to the police? Wouldn’t you be afraid that it would later be used in a crime and you’d be blamed for it?

    • It’s a theory about “straw purchases.” The hypothetical straw purchaser buys a bunch of guns and then they turn up at a crime scene and the purchaser says “oops.”

      Sort of like Eric Holder.

      Mind you, I suppose such a straw purchaser when confronted with a “crime gun” recovered at the scene could open their gun safe and say “oh my! I want to report a stolen gun! I haven’t opened this safe in months” so I don’t know what good it does.

    • Because why should I help the police department justify expanding its budget? Its not like theyre going to just give it back to me if they find it.

    • Linebacker U, if I swap guns with a friend or relative, if I give a pretty pink .357 to my wife as a gift, if I care for a financially challenged close friend in a bad neighborhood and help him with personal security by giving or loaning him a gun, those are all “transfers”. In the remaining free states, none of those things are illegal nor are they any of Big Brother’s nosy business and no paperwork is required. In Chicago…it would be a felony.

      • …or give a gun to one of my kids, or my family inherits my collection, or….. on and on those are now felonies unless getting the Godfather involved in something that is nonyadamnbusiness.

        • Because it is tacit registration. Because it gives the government another 20 ways to lock up a law abiding citizen for a small mistake or a lost piece of paper. Because if the confiscations start it lets them throw you in jail for hiding your guns and saying they were lost.

          Report stolen guns if you want, but requiring ten years of documents to prove ownership is nuts.

        • In the free areas of no registration, various authorities have no legal or constitutional need to know about any of those peaceable voluntary transfers between people. Hence the “nonyadamnbusiness”.

          Records have a way of becoming registrations and registrations have a way of becoming confiscations.

          History is full of examples of that and it is beginning to work through the same steps here.

    • Real world: My father had a fairly large firearms collection. He was sideswiped by another car and wound up in the hospital for over a month and then had some serious home care for an extended period after that. As you can imagine he didn’t do anything with his firearms during that period, he was too busy recovering. Eventually he discovered that his lock-box had been pried open and a fair amount of cash and one of his pistols was missing, for how long? Nobody knows but it could have been as long as 6 months. Laws like those being proposed would have then taken my severely injured father, who had also been burglarized, and clapped him in jail until the “system” figured out what needed to be done.

    • Some people just don’t think very clearly, but perhaps if you didn’t buy the gun legally, or even if your family didn’t know you had one?

      If you bought private party, and there’s no record of your owning that serial number, do you want your wife to find out? I’ve heard more ridiculous reasons for many things.

  3. I would love for some reporter to ask how registration will directly prevent homicides? Somehow a gun registered and recorded in a database will stop some gangbanger from being able to fire it to take out a rival?

    I could almost see their point if they could prove the link and show all the guns recovered in 2013 have a link back to a legal gun purchase who made an illegal transfer.

    Or, better yet, if gun owners in Cook County feel this will pass, urge gun friendly politicians to add an amendment that police have to prove the efficacy of the law over the next 5 years otherwise the law automatically no longer valid. I am willing to bet that many of those guns they find a) will not be able to be traced because the crooks will simply remove the serial numbers and b) many the guns are from out of state.

    Look, the real answer is the police have to actually do their job and they have to figure out the root cause and get involved with the community. We have seen in Hartford, CT and in LA, CA that when the cops actually do their job, crime and homicides go down.

    But, Rahm, being the politician he is, IT IS ALWAYS easier to find some other person or group or person to blame than taking personal responsibility for his and his administrations failure or making the police accountable. Its never his fault!

    • The truth is…. There is a small element of EVERY race that does not give a flip about what you and I consider normal. Chicago is full of low income bottom of the barrel people. The news cant say the 30% of the town is a wasteland and those people in question are a waste of space. I can because I lived close and saw for myself the life of these people. Chicago makes the rules and laws for the whole state and its such an unfair deal. Once you get out of Chicago is nothing but farming to the south. My solution would be to lump Chicago as its own waste of space and do not let any rules that you see there apply to the rest of the state. Any truthfully nobody cares that the low income people ( and you know what I mean ) are shooting each other and weeding out the gene pool. Yes its that bad there. Lack of respect for each other and total break down of the human race. The situation cant be fixed.

  4. If the firearm was stolen, used to commit a crime, then stolen from you, would you report it stolen ? Thus, now it is a crime for a criminal to not report the crime resulting in the loss of his daily work-tool by another criminal. clear ?

  5. The important thing here is that if you do not report a LEGAL SALE within 48 HOURS, you will be charged with a felony! I think it used to be 5 days, and you get a misdemeanor.

    Once you get that F on your record, you’re screwed.

    AND, you will have to sign up for the ‘Gun Offender Registry’, a program similar to Megan’s law, where you are required to be on a database for 4 years, and notify them of any move, etc.

    https://portal.chicagopolice.org/portal/page/portal/ClearPath/About%20CPD/Firearm%20Registration/GunOffenderRulesRegsAug11.pdf

  6. The ordinance would require… Violators would face up to six months in jail. That’s double the jail time for a reporting requirement that now applies only to permit holders in Chicago.

    And this is one of the many reasons why only 1-2% of Chicago FOID holders have Chicago Firearm Permits.

  7. At what point do they realize that none of the good guys have guns, and the gang members get together and become Emanuel’s ‘brownshirts’?

    or has that already happened? History rhymes. No tinfoil needed.

  8. The Canadian gun registry created for the same purpose was ended recently because it had cost billions over a decade to run and it had solved only a hand full of crimes in that time period.

    But why let facts or past experience get in the way of a good waste of public funds and more government power and control.

    • Absolutely true. Still, couple of facts to bear in mind:

      – “Restricted Wespons”, including all handguns and modern sporting rifles always were and still are subject to registration. The new registry that was then terminated applied to older Fud-type weapons.

      – All firearms owners in Canada are still required to have a firearms permit of some sort. And you can’t buy ammo without it.

      – Canadians in general didn’t turn against the concept of the registry, just against the insane amounts of waste and fraud that te Libs made part of its implementation.

  10. “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

    – 4th Amendment

    • Chicago translation:

      “The people have no right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects. Searches and seizures Warrants shall issue be issued, with no reason or probable cause, supported by rumors or lies, and particularly describing the place to be raided, and the persons or things to be taken and never to see the light of day.”

      “Amendment: Law enforcement are not required to verify or investigate ownership prior to kicking in the door. If the wrong address is searched too bad, if we shoot your dog or terrify your children it’s your own fault for living in Chicago”

  11. Laws do not prevent crime. Laws give the govt a way to punish. I am seriously frustrated with laws like this and all the other Little Johnny and Little Suzy laws that only affect honest citizens.

  13. America has gone absolutely nuts with mala prohibita law. It has lead to a dense and frightening minefield of felonies for the hapless citizen to step on. Buy the wrong kind of orchid, try to rehabilitate an eagle at home BANG off to prison with you. And when you do get out, sorry no civil rights for you.

    This is America falling without a shot being fired, as Nikita Khrushchev predicted.

  14. If you have the mindset and know because almost all guns in Chicago are illegal to start with then you have a reasonable suspicion about everyone and every gun.

    Simple ain’t it?

  15. Because gun ownership is such a difficulty in the first place, there is only a small gun right constituency of people that know what actual owners ship is. By passing even stricter measures, they maintain their jobs.

  16. So when did city of chicago become the county of cook and create ordinances for the county? Yes, I understand the crooks of chicagostan run the place, but let’s respect the process first

  17. So when did city of chicago become the county of cook and create ordinances for the county? Yes, I know the crooks of chicagostan run the place, but let’s respect the process first

  18. So when did city of chicago become the county of cook and create ordinances for the county? Yes, the crooks of chicagostan run the place, but let’s respect the process first

  19. Chicago does not have a “gun” problem. They have a gang problem.. And a liberal politician problem. Until they do something about gangs and liberals, they will continue to see record l;evels of crime.

  21. It really is incredible that the two upper-middle-class Chicago suburbs I grew up in Morton Grove and Skokie were the first two places in America to ban handguns back in the late 1970s. The area was very low in crime, socially conservative and yet politically progressive. Demographically it was 99% white and equally balanced out with protestant, catholic, and jewish families. The area also had its share of the American WW2 generation and Holocaust survivors. I occasionally saw the tattooed camp number on people’s arms. Logically and as a matter of common sense, you would think that those two suburbs would not be against civilian gun ownership for self-defense. On the contrary it they should have been gun enthusiasts. It was a case study in people learning the wrong messages from their own life experiences and history.

  22. I don’t understand the governing of Cook County. Iss the Mayor of Chicago the governing official of Cook County? The Independent City of St. Louis has its mayor and the County of St. Louis has its County Executive. These are two different governing bodies. I have been trying to figure out Cook County. I’m definitely not living or moving there. I see Chicago as a Nazi like regime. The residents of the rest of the state need to remind them that Chicago is not the stares capital

    • Tom, don’t know if you saw the news the other day, but Mayor Slay wants a different set of gun laws for STL. Oh, and Kansas City also!

      • Slay is a prick. He knows he is going to lose re-election and wants to show he is doing something and “but for” those damn republicans in the house/senate, he would be able to fix gun crime. I have emailed him and his chief of staff about this and well, . . . . silence.

  24. They show all of those M-1 Carbines and SKSs yet all assault weapons are already banned in the city. Shows how dumb this idiots ideas are.

  25. Police who value individual rights, and I count myself in this group, think this is utter garbage. While I am glad police don’t write the laws, sometimes I wonder about the people who do.

    In most of the country, this would go unenforced, like one local city that used to have a misdemeanor criminal law about lighting off fireworks. They somehow managed to not find a single violation during the 4th of July… and the city changed the law to a cheap ticket… and they still didn’t find any the next year.

    I still can’t believe these are elected officials sometimes.

  26. While CPD is hassling a 68 yr old man that lives in a bad neighborhood and wants to protect himself, gang-related mayhem goes unchecked. The original handgun ban was just a pretext for arresting people and confiscating guns, but it was woefully ineffective. Last year there were about 500 gun deaths a year, but I remember the record was around 1,000 in the 80’s or 90’s. Gun violence hasn’t decreased, but deaths have only because of advances in emergency care. Many of the “victims” in two-sided shoot outs end up quadriplegic. If legislators really want to do something about violent crime, increase penalties for felonies even more. Sure the prisons will be filled, but a few will be deterred, and the streets will be a little safer for the rest of us.

  27. My experience in doing work w/Chicago as a consultant is that their attitude is nothing is the City’s fault.

    – If gun crime increases then its not their fault that they aren’t doing enough policing, it’s Indiana or Mississippi or Alabamas fault that they don’t register guns.

    – If Chicago doesn’t have enough cops its not because they don’t hire enough, it’s because some other entity is charging “too much” for services and there’s no money in the City budget

    Etc.

  28. “We can’t wait,” will be the grabber’s rally cry and excuse to bypass the rule of law (read Constitution).

  29. You could report the theft of firearms you never had, right? And what if everyone in Rahmville reported the theft of the SAME firearm?

  31. ANYONE WHO IS AGAINST LEGAL GUN OWNERSHIP IS A TRAITOR TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NOW CHICAGO IS TRYING TO TOP NY AS THE ”GET TOUGH ON GUNS STATE ” UN -REAL WHERE DOES IT END ?? TRAITORS AND COMMIES

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