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Remember former Chicago Mayor Daley’s response to the McDonald decision, wherein the Supreme Court struck down the Windy City’s handgun ban? Well, besides putting up every imaginable bureaucratic and procedural hurdle to expanded gun ownership (e.g. mandatory training in a city where gun ranges are prohibited), Daley also shepherded a firearms registration law through the City Council. For the safety of police officers. No really. So how’s that working out then . . .

Through their inaction, the armed citizens of Chicago basically told their beloved former mayor to pound sand. A year later, a little over 3,000 Chicago residents have complied by registering their gats with the CPD. As one gun-owner who’s otherwise in full compliance with state laws put it:

Why should I go register with the city and later have a guy knock at my door saying, ‘Hey, can we see your gun?’

Swallow your coffee before the next sentence, OK? The law also was designed to treat anyone convicted of a gun crime just like a sex offender, requiring them to voluntarily register with the boys in blue.

[The law] requires that anyone convicted of a city, state, or federal gun law offense report it to the police department along with contact information, a photograph, and a copy of their driver’s license. Offenders who don’t comply can be jailed up to six months. In turn, the police department is directed to “create and maintain” a registry of the offenders.

Hope you didn’t spray your screen. It probably won’t surprise you to read that not only are the criminals not registering, but the cops haven’t even created the database to hold the information.

As in so many jurisdictions, Chicago’s so-called guardians believe there’s no problem that another law or regulation can’t fix. Never mind that the only people who are affected by the rules are law-abiding citizens. Muggers, gang-bangers and meth-heads don’t typically give a lot of thought to the latest utopian scheme to come out of the Chicago City Council.

Residents of the Windy City, however, appear to have had enough. If the response to Daley’s diktat is any indication, they’d prefer to protect themselves and take their chances with non-compliance. But Chicago’s gun-grabbing alderman see it as little more than a marketing problem.

Hopefully people will do the right thing and do the registrations like they’re supposed to, says Ninth Ward alderman Anthony Beale, who helped shepherd the law through the council last year. “But if they’re not, we need to promote it.”

Is it me or did alderman Beale just transform an innocent word into something altogether more ominous?

[Have a special firearm you’d like professionally photographed? Contact Dan Zimmerman through his website or email him at [email protected].]

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14 COMMENTS

  1. Why is it unions in Wisconsin can stop a legitimate law dead in its tracks, yet no gun rights advocacy organization (NRA, GOA, etc.) says boo to a clear violation of a Supreme Court ruling? Why do I give my money to these people?

    • Various gun organizations apparently did push some buttons to one degree or another to help WI’s concealed-carry bill, which should finish passing next Tuesday.

      …and then there will be one. And more of those organizations’ focus will likely fall onto that one. Of course, it doesn’t help much if the citizens of Chicago are just going to keep voting to have their city keep sucking.

    • The gun rights advocacy organizations are more interested in Illinois state concealed carry rights, which would pre-empt any Chicago laws. In other words: If we win in Illinois legislature/courts and a citizen gets to CCW, Chicago can’t do anything about him/her having a gun in his possession. This is a goal far more worthy of their resources since it takes many of the teeth out of Chicago’s ordinance and restores some of the rights that Illinois residents are currently prohibited from exercising.

      This is about winning a war, not a battle. Strategy over tactics. You could spread your resouces thin and fight every battle–winning some, and losing others–or you could focus your resources on the important objective, increasing your chances of victory there and creating a domino effect on others. Chicago can be won without fighting the battle. Take the state, win the city.

  2. I’m not registered properly…

    Get this, if you live in the city of Chicago:
    1) You must obtain a FOID from the state police(which just says you can pass a background check)
    2) You must obtain a CFP from the city police,(renewing every 3 years I think),
    2a) The CFP requires something like $100 fee
    2b) fingerprints done by city police,
    2c) certificate of classroom training for at least 4 hours,
    2d) certificate of range training(generally just part of c)
    3) Then you must register every firearm you own(more actually, I was told if I bought a slug barrel I’d have to register the new barrel as well) every year.
    The registration process is a pain in the ass of of course, and you have a combination of county law and city law which combine to make it near impossible to own a firearm that is semi-automatic. They both use a single feature test, but cover different things. Muzzle-break? No. Flash hider? No. Thumb-hole stock? No. Pistol grip? No. Barrel shroud? No. Anything capable of functioning as a forward grip? No. There is, of course, no explanation of what legally constitutes these features, and any local judge would rule extremely broadly in all likelihood. My solution is leaving ASAP.

  3. Until the mid-60’s, as a student at Oak Park and River Forest High School, I went with the Rotary Club to the Oak Park Police pistol range. I mastered the .38 and .357 there.

    It is a shame that today’s generation in Oak Park and the Chicago area will not have the same opportunities that I had while in high school.

    Thank God for the FREE State of Texas!

    I might not have been born here in Texas, but I got here as soon as I could!

  4. As a native Chicagoan who has lived in Virginia for 30 year I will not drive through Chicago out of fear of a traffic stop. The Virginia DMV identifies CCW permit holders. The cops would rip apart my car looking for the gun I do not have with me. Tough luck Chicago, no tourist dollars from me.

  5. My brother-in-law is a Chicago cop, south side. We had a discussion about private gun ownership by law abiding citizens and he is all for it, and adamantly so. He said most of the regular cops are too. It’s the top brass and those trying to move up who kiss the, ahem, rings of the politicians who are against legal gun ownership. Otherwise, unless you’re being stupid with a gun, you probably won’t be too hassled. But I still wouldn’t suggest walking around carrying in Chacago.

  6. As a lifelong Chicagoan and gun owner, there is no way in hell that I would register my guns with the City. I know a good number of owners that have also not registered, nor will they. My one friend who did, said the process was so over the top to not bother and regrets going through the whole charade. The rules are intentionally vague and obscure so that if in front of the right judge it could be argued that your 50 yr old Daisy Red Rider BB gun would be considered a lethal weapon.

  7. One of the most interesting newspaper columns in our world of propaganda “journalism” is a regular piece in the Chicago Tribune. The column is often linked through FreeRepublic.
    It seems that almost every weekend, the Chicago Tribune actually tallies the shootings and killings in Chicago. It seems strange that a city with such rigid anti-gun laws would have so many shootings, every week, and that the local paper would dare print stories about them.

  8. Chicago is a failed totalitarian city-state. This is what the left does when left unchecked, it completely corrupts and destroys.

  9. I hope I have the chance to meet this Daley dude in the afterlife (this also means that I hope he goes to heaven) so I can bust his chops.

  10. As someone who has been a Chicago resident (when he had to leave his guns in Wisconsin with friends as they were not legal even though the State of Illinois issued him a FOID gun permit) I can’t think of more prohibitive and ridiculous anti gun laws anywhere else on earth. I quickly moved to the suburbs where I can keep my guns, though I live 30 miles from the ccity center, and both the previous mayor and the current one have been pushing to bring severe restrictions on our little cities to the North of Chicago using Chicago’s enormous financial might. If it wasn’t for the GOA and the NRA, we Illinois residents would not have any gun ownership rights left. The Chicago Tribune, our biggest newspaper, carried a headline asking for the Second Amendment to be repealed the day the Supreme Court struck down the ridiculous Chicago gun law. Its nearly bankrupt rival, The Sun Times, is even moe anti gun if that could somehow be possible. That is why the Illinois State Rifle Association requests members and gun owners throughout the USA not to visit Chicago and to boycott businesses based there. When those of us who live in the suburbs find it cheaper to buy our groceries and to shop in Indiana or Wisconsin depending upon where we are, those who travel from other parts of the country could take a hint from us, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. If you do have to come to these parts, do visit the suburbs. We allow guns, the same stores that you would shop at in Chicago have branches (and prices are a lot lower) and we even have gun shops and ranges that we would love to meet up with you and chat. We are a friendly bunch and you won’t miss the city of Chicago one bit.

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