The Chicago Sun-Times columnist and editorial board member Neil Steinberg didn’t like the pro-gun rights highway signs he saw on his trip down from Chicago to Champaign-Urbana, IL this past weekend. He trotted out his well-worn playbook and scribbled out another nasty attack on good guys with guns, once more calling defensive gun uses “fantasies” and claiming they “come with a price” – as though law-abiding gun owners bear responsibility for criminal misuse of guns.
Reading it, I couldn’t help but wonder if Mr. Steinberg had a few tall ones before he began writing this latest hit piece. He’s got a self-admitted history of hard drunkenness – see his book Drunkard: A Hard-Drinking Life. He’s also got a history of a wife-beating too. I mention his pedigree because it goes to his character, or lack thereof.
Earlier this year in June, he screeched about legalizing hand grenades:
“Legalize grenades?!?” the liberals among you moan. Surely, this must be a Swiftian modest proposal. Grenades are military weapons with no purpose but to kill.
The same could be said for assault rifles, if you ignore — and I am deadly serious here — the role that fantasy plays in gun culture.
The same day that went to press, Steinberg tried to buy an AR-15 from a suburban Chicago gun shop as part of a planned attack on America’s favorite rifle and gun shops. His scheme got derailed as the store denied his purchase.
Why did the store cancel the sale to our stumbling scribe? His long history of substance abuse and the high-profile arrest for beating his wife badly enough she was injured and then pulling the phone out of the wall to stop her from calling for help.
The poor denied columnist then wrote another screed describing his unhappy experience at the gun store, lamenting how “would-be terrorists” could buy guns, but not reporters.
Fast forward about three months to today and he’s back with a familiar story-line about fantasies and guns. Here are excerpts from Mr. Steinberg’s latest screed in the Chicago Sun-Times:
Steinberg: Those good-guy-with-a-gun fantasies have a real price
You can’t drive down to Champaign without loving America just a little bit more. All that open space. The miles of brown September corn. The decaying red barns. The communications towers against big blue skies. The fact that the crazy 55 mph speed limit finally went back up to 70, a sign that our nation still retains the ability to repair our errors, at least the minor ones.
There are, of course, ominous signs as well — literal signs, like the “TRUMP-PENCE” billboard in one farmer’s field.
Signs for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign are “ominous”? Ominous is three shopping mall rampages in ten days, two of which are likely Islamic terror attacks. The third? It’s too early to tell.
Or another announcing “GunsSaveLife.com,” an Illinois pro-guns-everywhere group formed, apparently, because the NRA just isn’t busy enough. The website’s top story is headlined “ARE NO GUNS MALLS SAFE?” and begins “Are America’s malls with ‘NO GUNS’ polices safe for you and your kids and grandkids to visit? That’s a great question given a pair of Muslim terror attacks a week apart at malls that shared policies and/or signage that prohibits law-abiding good guys from carrying guns on their premises . . . .”
Fair disclosure: I serve as the Executive Director of Guns Save Life.
Yes, Guns Save Life has a very successful, very widely-read highway sign program that touts pro-civil rights messages along the highways and Interstates in Illinois. Signs with slogans like:
DIALED 911
AND I’M ON HOLD
SURE WISH I HAD
THAT GUN I SOLD
GunsSaveLife.com
The actual headline on the Guns Save Life website’s post: “A FINE QUESTION: Are “NO GUNS” Malls Safe? Two Muslim terror attacks in week at malls with NO GUNS policies.” So the Sun-Times editorial board member changes my headline to all caps and removes quotation marks to make it grammatically incorrect in his citation. Is that ethical behavior for reporters at the Sun-Times, much less a senior editor? What’s more, he did it in a carefully-crafted effort to make it seem as though gun rights activists are inarticulate, raving lunatics. It isn’t the first time Neil Steinberg has played fast and loose with the truth to suit his agenda. In fact, it comes in the next paragraph.
I somehow screw up the courage to go to Northbrook Court without an AR-15 (which, I suppose I must point out, Maxon Shooter Supply notwithstanding, I could easily and legally buy if I chose to, which I don’t). But I understand others find this prospect terrifying.
He chose to buy an AR-15 once before but got denied on the purchase because of his alcoholism and past history of wife-beating charges. He might easily choose to buy one somewhere else, but I suspect he’s reluctant to risk suffering another denied purchase.
Give GunsSaveLife.com credit for moxie. Guns actually kill people, and when you look at the stats — hard to do, with Congress obstructing research into gun violence — you see that states with looser gun laws suffer more random gun violence. Because terror attacks — even two a week — though scary, are exceedingly rare compared with the daily slaughter that having handguns everywhere encourages.
Once again, Neil is slick as a snake oil salesman. Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. And in Chicago, it’s usually a certain kind of people: Gang members with long criminal histories that are prohibited by gun laws from buying, possessing or shooting guns. Yet these criminals ignore the law (sorry for being repeating myself), carry guns unlawfully and do things like shoot at other people and sometimes kill them, actions that are (also) prohibited by law.
Steinberg asserts that: “states with looser gun laws suffer more random gun violence.” Really now? Florida has had a shall-issue right-to-carry law for almost thirty years now. Unlike in Chicago where only a tiny fraction of one percent of residents have a carry license, roughly one in five adults in Florida has a license and a heater on their person. At the same time Florida enjoys near-record lows of firearm violent crime (see Florida firearm violence hits record low; concealed gun permits up). Mr. Steinberg failed to mention that fact.
Florida’s low-rate of firearm violent crime (“random gun violence” as Steinberg terms it) has come about because of Florida’s now-repealed 10-20-Life Law which added sentence enhancements to violent crimes committed with firearms, taking violence-prone individuals off the street. Under that law, possession of a gun during a violent crime added 10 years to one’s sentence on top of the underlying charge. Fire the gun, add 20 years. Wound or kill someone? Add 25 years to life in prison. There was no plea bargaining, no parole and no day-for-day good time – just hard time. It made bad guys think twice.
Instead of blaming the criminals, Steinberg blames the gun – or law-abiding gun owners when it suits him. It’s very much akin to a simpleton blaming Steinberg’s Mercedes for driving drunk instead of the drunk behind the wheel.
That’s just a fact. Don’t hate me for telling you.
…The news we heard driving back up Interstate 57 the next morning was of gunfire. Around the time we turned in and a mile away, four people were wounded and one killed in a pair of shootings, possibly related, near the University of Illinois campus.
Police believe 21-year-old Deveron Nash, of (drumroll please…) Chicago, got into a tussle at a party. He thought the Champaign campus of the University of Illinois was just like his hometown of Chicago – America’s largest open-air shooting range. His reaction to being “disrespected” involved pulling his illegally-possessed and -carried gun and starting to shoot. Four people got shot and one woman got hit by a car as she ran into the street to escape the mayhem.
A 22-year-old passerby, George Korchev, took one of the stray rounds and died. He was set to start his job as a registered nurse at Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, IL today, September 26th. Instead, he died because a bad man from Chicago had evil in his heart.
Not that such a thing shouldn’t be news — “Big festival celebrating joys of life” isn’t news; “Boob gets in argument, shoots people” is. But what you will never see on GunsSaveLife is that chasing the fantasy of being the good guy who gets the drop on the terrorist at the mall sparks 10,000 tragic accidents and unwise shootings like the one in Champaign.
“Tragic accidents and unwise shootings”? Is that what they call criminal violence in Chicago now?
Americans use their guns to thwart hundreds of thousands, if not millions of crimes each and every year. Don’t hate me for telling you the facts, Mr. Steinberg. Despite the best efforts of gun-hating critics, the peer-reviewed scientific study of the number of real-life defensive gun uses stands.
It’s worse than tragic, it’s dumb, and if we were a nation that copes with our problems instead of sanctifying them, we would realize that. Oh well, at least we got the speed limit back where it belongs. Maybe there’s hope.
Indeed there is hope. Hope that people like Steinberg will quit blaming guns for criminal violence and instead go after the criminals behind them just as we, as society, prosecute drunk drivers instead of demonizing the vehicles they drive… or to stop blaming the alcohol for wife-beating instead of the man beating his wife.
Jesus, you two. Get a room.
The guy is a tool, but on the plus side, he strengthens my faith in the existence of Hell. ?
Sounds to me like sour grapes over us not letting him in our little club.
You get that too…
He went to buy a gun to do a hit piece on just how easy it is to buy a gun. Then when he is denied, he claims it’s easier for a terrorist to get a gun than for a reporter to get one.
“Heads I win, tails you lose.”
He is a prohibited person under Federal and state law. If he failed to answer the domestic violence questions honestly on his 4473 he is commited a felony as well.
Correct. If this actually happened, this reporter should be in prison for at least 5 years. In fact, even if he answered the questions honestly, if he handled a firearm during the course of the visit to the gun store, he is eligible for that 5 years in federal prison, without parole. But, *he* will not be prosecuted.
I don’t think he was convicted because his wife ended up not pressing charges. Not sure about the substance abuse issues in regards to the form, I don’t drink so I really don’t pay attention to it.
To be more precise, it’s easier for a would-be-terrorist with no criminal record to buy a firearm than journalist with a documented history of alcoholism and a domestic abuse conviction. This is because we haven’t yet passed laws against thought-crime and the authorities can’t arrest and prosecute people for ‘hating infidels’. I guess we’re just still too far up the slippery slope.
So then, it’s he and Mark Kelly who should get a room.
It’s funny, this is raw projection from these folks. They think gun-owners are as messed up they are…then they try to buy a gun.
This guy sounds like the type to shoot his wife just to prove his thesis, if only he could get his hands on a gun.
Mr. Steinberg may be a recovering drunk and wife beater, but in this case he’s manifesting symptoms of a serious mental illness – liberalism. The disease is marked by an almost complete intolerance to opposing views, objective facts and common sense. In the most severe cases, sufferers such as Mr. Steinberg tend to lash out in a self-righteous manner against those who believe in individual liberty. My prognosis for Mr. Steinberg and others like him is not good. Left unchecked, liberalism has been known to destroy their sufferers.The only antidotes to this disease are constant vigilance and freedom, and they must be applied each and every day. Otherwise this disease will spread like a cancer and consume the entire society..
+1
Man is he gonna be pissed when Trump gets sworn in. Does this guy comment here under the name of Demo Man or Otis MacDonalds ghost?
Nah jwm. Someone thinks it’s “Ken”. He’s got a lot of 1st hand knowledge of central/southern Illinois and a personal vendetta-unlike our favorite troll lol. Hey they could have used a good guy with a gun-college murder/mayhem in Champagne over the weekend…this drunk deserves all the abuse he gets.
Steinberg isn’t scum because he is anti-gun. He is scum because he is a drunken wife beater.
Being anti gun just indicates a lack of common sense, you know, on top of being scum….
Here, here! We need not listen to criminals who do not care about the safety of others (disarmament and drunk driving) and beat women.
“He is scum because he is a drunken wife beater.”
No, sorry, should be “He is scum because he is a drunk and a wife beater.” There was nothing in the article to suggest that his wife has a drinking problem.
Perhaps he is so virulently anti-gun not only because he is a (shudder) Liberal, but because he fears that his wife may discover that she has the natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to get herself a gun and shoot the bastard next time he raises a hand to her?
His anti-gun positions can be traced to his being a piece-of-shit drunken wife beater.
Congress should prohibit wife beaters from voting and from marrying.
But then how would they ever determine that you’re a wife beater?
Prosecutions, trials, verdicts…you may have heard of the concept.
The fact that Steinberg is still employed shows how desperate the Sun-Crimes is. Apparently they have trouble hiring decent reporters so they keep the crappy ones around.
You had me at “Chicago”. ‘New York’, ‘Baltimore’, or ‘Detroit’ would have worked, too.
All one needs to do to shut this prig up is ask a simple yes or no question: have you stopped beating your wife?
Seriously, screw this guy.
Of course he’s anti gun. He’s shitting bricks that his wife will buy one before he can ban them.
“at least we got the speed limit back where it belongs”
And when the speed limit went north of 55 (again) many people died who would have not before and fuel efficiency went down. Society made a choice – a choice that favors freedom. You can still do 55 or you can go faster (but w/ more risk and less fuel).
“There are, of course, ominous signs as well — literal signs, like the “TRUMP-PENCE” billboard in one farmer’s field.”
These days you can’t go more than 10 feet in America without seeing a sign or sticker pushing for Hillary or Trump. It is not a point to be enraged about. Yes, there will be people in this life with different opinions than you. Booze does many things but something turned this guy into a temporary kindergartner.
“And when the speed limit went north of 55 (again) many people died who would have not before and fuel efficiency went down.”
BULLSHIT! Writ large. Patently and pure lies. How about a link, a citation, a HINT about where you downloaded such absolute drivel? Speeds did not even change when the limits went up, people had been driving those speeds regardless of what the stupid signs said.
Especially in the intermountain west.
They used to issue tickets for speeding over 55 up to 75 in some states for (get this) “wasting a precious natural resource.”
The DOT told the states that if they didn’t enforce the 55 limit, they’d lose highway funding. So several states decided to enforce the speed limit the best way they knew how. Officer Friendly would pull you over, run your license/reg/plates, and if you were clean, issue you a “wasting precious natural resources” ticket. 0 points, $0.00, no need to appear.
But it was a real ticket, written out of his ticket book. DOT quota problem solved.
Perhaps he’s so bent on disarmament because the next time he gets drunk, tries to beat his wife, and rips away the phone, she might legally defend herself, ballistically speaking?
I like Steinberg because he’s clearly, obviously and totally fruit-loops. In fact, I like him so much that I’d like to buy him a drink and a hooker. He probably needs them.
Illinois Road Trip to Big Al’s!
ETA: Hey, maybe that’s where he was going during his trip downstate?
I wouldn’t do that to the hooker.
Ralph, don’t you need to buy him a GoPro, too?
Hey Neil, #wiveslivesmatter
Well at least they do to those of us that don’t beat our wives. I’m sure it was just the alcohol, right Neil?
I mean, it’s not like your writing style makes you come across as an arrogant controlling azzhole or anything.
Being a drug addictioned writer his musings are very suspect. The news paper will continue to pay him but his drug ( alcohol ) warped mind helps make the Sun Times look very bad.
I just checked the map again. sChitcago is again and still (even with urban sprawl) a piss ant little patch of real estate that could use a meteor strike [68 meters dia., Mach 22, ought to do it]. They don’t need to waste their time trying to dictate to us, the last thing decent that they gave to us was ________ N O T H I N G (still waiting you (D) POS up there)
sChitcago is full of evil fn (D)umbasses that have, FOR WAY TOO LONG, given us the “We’re severely F’d up. We need to fix you” routine, and they need to STFU.
When the (D)-imported Flint, MI, jihadis come over to visit you, we’ll come help, but late.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I am SO *stealing* sChitcago. Nothing you can do!
If he was a prohibited person and attempted to purchase a firearm, that is a violation of federal law. I’ll bet he isn’t prosecuted, along with the tens of thousands of other criminals like him who are prohibited persons who attempt to purchase from an FFL.
If I recall correctly, he wasn’t a prohibited person per se, but the shop owner thought his name was familiar and did a little web search. Finding he was a wife-beater, he declined to sell him a gun, convicted or no, passed background check or no.
In other words, the system worked just as a lot of anti-gunners whine that it should, with the shop-owner using judgment and discretion when making sales. (Or not.)
SO a homosexual couple can put a bakery out of business for refusing to provide a cake for their wedding. What are the potential legal repercussions for an FFL that refuses to sell to a Muslim just because he/she is a Muslim?
Nothing. The ATF has told me that they will never back a case against me for refusing to transfer a gun to someone.
I, as a FFL, can decide to refuse the transfer because I don’t like the looks of them – for whatever reason.
He’s not prohibited. He’s part of the elites.
His Dom Violence case got dismissed after he went to drunk school… Er, rehab.
John
Background checks only work when the person does not know they are prohibited and try to buy a gun. Then they find out they are a “bad guy”.
Apparently his wife beating and domestic abuse got him into NICS.
AFAIK, hand grenades are a “Destructive Device” and if you can pass the Form 4 requirements and don’t mind blowing hundreds of dollars every time you pull the pin, not to mention the $200 to the BATFE for the Tax Stamp, then go for it if you can find a seller. Probably a Class 3 FFL.
So all of you guys think that someone who admits to past problems with drugs, alcohol or violence should forever be a prohibited person?
Or is that just reserved for those whose politics you disagree with?
This is a question I ask repeatedly when I read the comments, and I try when I have the time to educate these people. Not sure how much good that is doing.
NICS checks and the very concept of a “prohibited person” as relates to firearms (or any arms) is blatantly unconstitutional and a clear violation of the “…shall not be infringed.” clause of the Second Amendment. There can be no exceptions to this.
Lying wife-beating gun hating D-bags with a national megaphone fall into section 34(a) of the Liberty manual for special dispensation.
I sure believe in it for Barack Obama and Bill Clinton!
Swarf- “So all of you guys think that someone who admits to past problems with drugs, alcohol or violence should forever be a prohibited person?”
Yes, they do. John Boch is so uptight that he probably never took a toke in his life, because even back in high school he wanted to “have a clean record” so he could apply for the C.I.A. or whatever when he “grew up” (which never happened, growing up that is.) John is the sort of guy who carried a briefcase in high school, and in grammar school constructed not just models of Tiger tanks, but complete dioramas.
Cliff- “This is a question I ask repeatedly when I read the comments, and I try when I have the time to educate these people. Not sure how much good that is doing.”
It’s doing no good whatsoever. You can’t educate rubes, they’re too stupid. In addition to criminal penalties for every violation of Illinois’ concealed carry law, sponsor state Rep. Brandon Phelps let the anti-gun representatives and police unions establish a Concealed Carry Licensing Review Board, consisting of a retired federal judge, three federal agents, a couple of government lawyers, and a shrink.
You have to provide a ten year address history on the CC application to the IL State Police. Then every police department from everywhere you ever lived can flag your app. and jam it up if you had an argument with your next door neighbor about dog shit.
There are thousands of people waiting over a year for a ruling from the CCLRB with no help from John Boch, Guns Save Life, or the NRA. John is too busy feeding orphans and managing his self promotion. Besides, the police are your friends! If you got flagged it must be because you are not “one of the good guys.”
Ayayay, who’s a violent sauce monster to say what I’m about? Is this somehow, miraculously insight on his part or just projection by a misanthropic, addled mind?
Eh no DDs this is IL.
“Steinberg”
Oy vey!
We should Stein-Boig to Skokie.
I hate Chicago Commies.
Damn browser, it’s supposed to read:
We should send Stein-Boig to Skokie.
I hate Chicago Commies.
Neilpoo don’t contaminate the real world, stay in the hive.
“Kneel Stein-Boig” his name says it all.
Th! Th! Th! That’s All Folks!
What a wad! “The pot calling the kettle black”. Ar$ehole.
The best part is that these same libbies who want to ban all plebeian gun-ownership also want to lower the speed limit to 55 (if not lower) everywhere, have jackbooted, salt-waffle-armed cops all up in your grill 24/7/365, and keep the War on Drugs and the student- and medical-debt schemes going. Damn hypocrites.
Another lying, anti-gun drunk like Water Jacobson…
“The Chicago Sun-Times columnist and editorial board member Neil Steinberg didn’t like the pro-gun rights highway signs he saw on his trip down from Chicago to Champaign-Urbana, IL this past weekend.”
Shorter version: progressives do not like free speech. At all. Not one bit.
Why further any recognition of his “work”?
This is why I gave up buying the Tribune years ago. The only thing its good for is to put in the bottom of a bird cage, and I don’t have a bird.
Went to school with this guy. He was a self-impressed tool then too. Ironic that the funniest thing he came up with back then was a Student Government campaign slogan “Pound a Heinie(ken) and Vote for Steinie”
So he should be happy the system worked and kept a gun out of the hands of a bad person. He’s an admitted drunk and cowardly woman beater. A person with violent tendencies and a alcohol problems are exactly the kind of people who should not own guns.
Too bad his 1st Amendment rights were not taken away when his 2nd’s were.
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