It’s no secret that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has caught flak about some of the things he’s said throughout his career. Normally I couldn’t care much less about most of the contrivances that the media blasts him about. The Meigs Field incident? Eh. Casinos within Chicago? :: shrug :: The trucking licenses scandal? I dunno. A lot of these incidents are very large scandalous issues which involve a lot more than just Daley. But today I heard him say something at a press conference which I just couldn’t believe.
He made a statement linking his position on firearms in Chicago to the school shooting that just happened in Minnesota, stating that if stricter control over firearms was maintained in other states around Illinois that are more liberal with firearm ownership, these things wouldn’t happen.
Excuse the language, but where the fuck does he get off saying this?
The child who shot up his school the other day was obviously a very troubled child whose problems were never addressed, and as in all other school shootings like the ones before this, nothing was done until it was too late. It’s a terrible tragedy. The truth of the matter is: he lived with his grandfather, who was a police officer. This is where he obtained the firearms that he used. He did not buy them, legally or illegally. He did not visit a firearms store. He stole them from his grandfather, a police official who owned a firearm or firearms as part of his job and, more than likely, for self defense of his home. I’ve no doubt most every police officer probably owns more than just his standard-issued sidearm for self-defense of his home. This boy shot his grandfather, stole his car and proceeded to the school where the rest of it unfolded. I suppose if stricter gun control laws had existed in Minnesota, as Daley seems to suggest, this wouldn’t have occurred. The grandfather’s firearms wouldn’t have been stolen and ten people wouldn’t have been killed.
This paragraph is a bit of a tangent, but an elaboration on the gun control issue in Illinois and Chicago. It’s a statistical fact that victims of armed and aggravated assault are greater in Illinois than in states around Illinois where concealed carry laws are allowed. It’s my belief that this statistic only exists because people in Illinois are not allowed to carry a concealed firearm, but this doesn’t have much bearing on this specific incident. Never mind the fact that every gun owner I’ve ever met from another state where concealed carry laws are allowed has ever killed another person in either malice or as part of a crime. The only stories I have ever heard from responsible concealed carriers are stories of self-defense and how carrying a firearm has only helped to dissolve a potentially deadly situation, or save someone’s life. In Illinois, however, “concealed carry” = “potential armed criminal”. :rolleyes:
Point of it all is: I can’t believe Daley could use this event to justify gun control laws in Illinois, much less anywhere else. Absolutely absurd, especially given the circumstances about how it happened.
[Archie Bunker] The solution to these school shootings is simple: Arm all the students with handguns so that when some deranged lunatic wielding a firearm barges into a classroom with guns a blazing, the students can draw their weapons and blast the miscreant off the face of the Earth. [/Archie Bunker]
I am in favor of reasonable gun control, and I do not think concealed carry is a good idea (I’m of two minds about open carry though), but I cannot imagine any style of gun control that would forbid a police officer to have a gun at his home. No gun control law could have prevented this tragedy.
Well, in the U.K., cops don’t generally even carry guns at work.
I don’t know about where you are, but here in Denver, police are technically always on duty. I wouldn’t want them to be unarmed and have to deal with a crime they stumbled across. So I guess I could imagine it, but I think it’d be dumb.
Though it wasn’t my intent to split hairs about open/concealed carry, I respect your opinion disagreeing with concealed carry. When you get down to it, there are many ways of legislating firearm carry laws. There’s a difference, yes, but I don’t think open carry laws will EVER happen in any urban area or urbanized state. I don’t want to get too far off topic … the jist here is that the big gun control advocates are so blind to the reality of the issues that they take extreme positions similar to Daley, and it’s ridiculous. I would venture to say that 99.9% of criminals do not purchase their firearms at gun shops. You don’t see law-abiding citizens going to the local pharmacy to pick up a few ounces of cocaine or a bag of marijuana.
Anyway, this subject has been beaten to death a thousand million times … which is exactly why I don’t get how Daley could be so obtuse about it.
Remeber Carl Rowan? It’s a funny thing how people respond differently to actual personal circumstances rather than hypothetical imaginary ones.
It is noteworthy that, as mayor, Daley has a permenant armed guard with him, isolating him from any need for self-protection. It’s only just slightly hypocritical of him to claim that no one else need to provide for their own protection.
He’s just looking for some issue to distract the heat on him. Gun control is a hot button issue, and it is easy to erect a strawman and paint gun owners as blood-thirsty, trigger-happy, imbecilic, et cetera by selective editing and highlighting the tail end of the bell curve. (Hi, Michael Moore!)
Heh. I didn’t catch the juxtaposition of what I said. The culture of violence in this country pretty much requires cops to be armed. Other countries may be able to have unarmed police; we can’t. In my opinion.
What are we talking about here? Are we talking about people who commit gun crimes? If so, then you’re probably wrong, because there is a significant number of gun crimes committed by people with no record at all, the so called “passion” or “heat of the moment” crimes.
If you’re talking about already convicted criminals, the number is about that, and 100% if we’re talking about convicted felons since they are not allowed to even be in the same building with a privately owned gun, let alone own one.
No, I was mostly referring to the latter, criminals who are just downright human scum who abide by no laws. Crimes of passion are an entirely different thing altogether, and if people who committed crimes of passion had no legal access to guns, they’d use something else. A vehicle, a knife, a baseball bat, poison, their fists …
So how do you stop kids from doing these school shootings? The kid freaks out, and thinks about blowing everyone away. In gun controlled countries, kids still freak out but it is harder to blow everyone away when they can’t get hold of a gun. Do they even think about it? They may want to lash out, but grabbing a gun may not be their first thought. So how do you change attitudes towards guns in young people who want to hurt the world?
Daley’s original comments don’t even make sense. (But what should I expect from a politician twisting a point for his own agenda.) Even if the State of Minnesota had a total ban on gun ownership (which would never happen anyway, too may hunters, especially in the north of the state), the tragedy happened on sovereign Tribal land and such a ban would not apply within the tribal boundaries. He may as well wish that guns had not played such a major role in the history of the US and that we, as a culture, had the same opinion towards guns as many European nations.
This deserves its own thread, but you’ve just pointed your question in the right direction, there. You’re not going to make firearms and other dangerous devices completely inaccessible, regardless; so you’d best think about ways of mitigating or correcting the attitudes that would lead some kid to take such an action in the first place.
I have to admit; a little more prodding, and I could have been one of those kids in a black trenchcoat (actually, I wore an olive drab Army overcoat), nursing a grudge and planning neferious revenge in my secret notebooks. I was fortunate in that I had a future ambition–going to university, studying physics and math–that permitted me to endure the isolation, neglect, abuse, bullying, and general malfeasance (and not just from other kids) without completely losing my grip on reality, but I can imagine what it would be like for a kid who had nothing to hold on or look forward to.
That’s the problem you need to address in regard to school outbursts/shootings. To chase after gun control is to avoid the real (and much more difficult to address or resolve) issue.
I don’t know anyone who owns a gun. I’m not even sure I’ve ever met anyone who owns a gun. It makes me happy that policemen are not walking around routinely with weapons on or off duty. And that a pissed teenager who wants to lash out at the world won’t find a firearm in their house.
That is all.
