More Second Amendment Fun

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed

So anyway, Oak Park, Illinois made the news again today in the ongoing aftermath of the McDonald v. Chicago decision.

As many of you know, Chicago and Oak Park's handgun laws were challenged in the wake of the landmark D.C. vs. Heller decision, see e.g. NRA vs. Village of Oak Park, resulting in the McDonald vs. Chicago decision which imposed the Heller regime on states via fourteenth amendment due process incorporation.

Oak Park plans forum on gun laws, ownership

We'll see what kind of presence the Illinois State Rifle Association brings to the forum, but it should be interesting. Ultimately I think it's a good thing that the NRA and ISRA keep a watchful eye on the Village of Oak Park and our insidious efforts to piss on the second amendment. That's democracy at work, more or less.

 

^Misleading Thread Title

I thought we'd be having actual fun.

NOW this is fun... Let's have to go out and buy semi-automatic rifles because
our nation won't secure our borders...

Or the Texas Pork Chopper Law Shoot those useless feral hogs from the sky!

 

Except I like how in the roundtable, the mayor, Tom Barwin, basically lead off with a quote that the purpose of the meeting was: "This is so we can do all we can collectively to make sure children aren?t taken down by stray bullets," Of course, the mere fact that Oak Park now has a shop that sells firearms along its border, doesn't mean that the town turned into the wild West. Of course, since Oak Park's "gun ban" was lifted a year ago, overall crime in Oak Park fell 8 percent, and for the entire year of 2011, there was not one murder in Oak Park, gun related or otherwise.

This doesn't mean that the crime rate in Oak Park fell because the village's gun ban was lifted. It just means that crime, like everything else, is a complicated social formula. What's clear though is that Oak Park's streets didn't run red with blood simply because the residents could choose to own a gun. (The "run red with blood" was a quote from last year, when the village was deciding how to proceed after the SC decision.)

 

I'm inclined to agree with you that the melodrama hasn't done much to change what is essentially a non issue. We discussed this last year about the gun shop. He could have tried to open it in the heart of Oak Park's so-called shopping district. In choosing between making a living and making a political statement, Delafuente chose the former, or at least leaned heavily in that direction.

That said I don't necessarily respect the IL State Rifle Association for using the Village as a rallying cry for the troops. How many of its members actually live here? If they don't, they should probably just **** off. If they have members who live in our town, they're more than welcome.

In my world, I'm spending all my extra local political time trying to get the high school and park district to collaborate on building a new competitive/recreational swimming pool. That's a lot more interesting than this, though not any more fun (sorry Master_SweetPea). Oak Park's infrastructure is falling apart, and there's not going to be any good way to shoot our way out of the problem.

 

I agree with everything in your post except for the "rallying cry" part. Let's say Oak Park was involved in some sort of privacy issue. Would you tell the ACLU to go away, if they didn't actually live in town? No matter if it's the ISRA, the ACLU, or the ASPCA, politically focused groups have always given issues a voice. The political issue itself could easily become a larger issue (Oak Park's ordnance could be adopted by other towns, or whatever..) The political process has never really stopped at the border of a town. Having said that, how many ISRA members do you think are actually going to go to this thing? Probably 1 or 2 media representatives/spokespeople? I can't imagine very many people coming out in the cold for a roundtable that really doesn't have any hotbed issue tied to it.

 

Not when there's a State of the Union Address to watch instead. Do you think the president will sing? I'd like to see some kind of Obama/Biden duet tonight.

 

I don't think gun laws will be national politics again anytime soon, if ever; the general estimate of total American gun owners from the NRA is between 70-80 million. That's a pretty massive demographic to piss off, especially with a lobby as well-organized and powerful as the NRA is.

Edit: That said...I think the fear-mongering about "Obama will take our guns!!" is about the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. Strictly speaking, Democrats are no more likely than Republicans to pass gun laws (FDR with the NFA in 1937, and LBJ with another in 1968 is pretty evenly weighted with the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 and the various state-level laws Republicans have passed, and Obama never so much as mentioned gun laws in any of his campaign speeches. Didn't prevent gun purchase from skyrocketing over the last four years.

 

If you wanna have fun, shoot some wolves in Alaska too. This does make you, technically, worse than Hitler, in that regard: The man loved dogs.

Hell, in South Dakota, Janklow is the first one to get elected on "I was accused of raping a 15-year-old girl" ever back in the 70s. He'd also go around Rosebud shooting dogs, and only vehicular homicide ended his political career. Now that is how self-identified "red-staters" have fun. Moar recently, we've had Bill Napoli (Same name? Seriously?) talking about an "acceptable" abortion. As usual, NO EXCEPTIONS!

 

So what exactly is the problem here?
People in a village are about to have a forum and pass some new rules?
I guess my only concern would be if they come out with a banned model list like Chicago did.
Simply because I consider snakes a real threat when I'm hiking and I'd like to switch over to a derringer one day, (from the automatic that I carry now)

7 posts and we reached the Probability of 1

I'll have to look into an Alaska shoot, they might have dropped the price now that Texas opened up.

 

Yeah, lord knows there are lots of rattlers in Illinois.

 

Yeah and people from one state NEVER vacation in another state.

 

So, I thought I would chime in on this issue since preventing gun violence does seem to be a worthwhile endeavor.

I live in California, in Contra Costa County, just a few miles from Oakland. In the past few months, 3 children under 5 years old have been killed in drive-by shootings or by someone just walking up to a group of people and opening fire. In most of these cases, the shooter(s) is/are in custody.

As sad as this is, the solution is not more gun laws, which are basically a knee-jerk reaction to types of shootings like the ones I mentioned.

Most of the shootings were by gang members. I say, instead of creating more gun control laws, how about attacking the actual root of the problem, the gangs. It would take a good amount of money, but if we focus on education, including educating young people on how to be good parents, maybe some of this will stop.

And supporting after school programs, and the Girls & Boys clubs of America.

I still am in favor of people being trained to use guns safely and if there's a gun in a home with small children, the guns should be locked up so the kids can't get ahold of them.

Just my .02 cents worth.

 

I agree! If for example you armed the Boy and Girl Scouts of America, they could take on the inner city gangs themselves.

 

Jabba,

That's not what I meant by 'after-school activities.' And the Boy Scouts do have a safe shooting program where they teach the boys to handle weapons safely, from archery and bb guns for the cub scouts to rifles and shotguns for the older boys.

 

The BSA sounds like a very well-regulated militia.

 

Yeah, and they wear uniforms, too.

 

Bloomberg Keeps on going

Two Mayors could really hurt or help the Democrats this next election.

 

Depends on how they present their ideas (and, of course, the substance) If the goal really is restricting the black market on firearms as opposed to bans based on how evil something looks, that's a logical law.