Oak Park meeting highlights handgun safety, use and control (IL)

chicagotribune.com ^ | 24 January, 2012 | Bridget Doyle

[marktwain]

Oak Parkresidents, officials and members of the Illinois State Rifle Association from around the state met Tuesday night to weigh in on issues related to handgun safety, use and control in the village.

The meeting, conducted by the village’s Board of Health, came more than a year after a U.S. Supreme Court decision gutted a local handgun ban and a few weeks after the opening of a gun shop on Roosevelt Road in the western suburb.

Members of the Illinois State Rifle Association arrived in gold hats, t-shirts and other identifying clothing and were directed by village staff to sit in the back.

Village Manager Tom Barwin gave a brief background on the village’s history with firearm laws, touching on Oak Park’s April 1984 handgun ban and the July 2010 invalidation of the village’s ban following theU.S. Supreme Court’s decision regarding Second Amendment rights.

“Tonight is a forum to hear from Oak Parkers (and the) ideas, suggestions and thoughts in light of the McDonald case and the invalidation of the Oak Park handgun ban,” Barwin said. “What, if anything, should the board consider in order for Oak Park to stay the safe and nurturing community it has been…It’s quite clear firearms, violence, accidents and crimes are costly to our village in a myriad of ways.”

Barwin said the bottom line is to get all sides on the issue together in one room to come up with strategies and ideas.

“This is so we can do all we can collectively to make sure children aren’t taken down by stray bullets,” Barwin said Monday. “That could mean solutions like education efforts or training efforts. We’re not trying to do any interpretation of the Second Amendment. We’re just coming together to minimize the proliferation of firearms ending up in the wrong hands.”

[marktwain]

The concept that the government could or should only “allow” certain people to buy guns stands the very concept of American jurisprudence on its head. It presumes that the government knows all, controls all, and should be doing so. It is wrong and ineffective. It is the opposite of preventing criminals from possessing guns.

It is crazy to set up a huge expensive bureaucratic system, require everyone to jump though hoops and prove that they are *not* criminals in order to try, ineffectively, to prevent the few individuals who are not responsible, from having legal access to guns. This is a failed paradigm, and it should be abandoned. To accept the idea that the all gun sales should be monitored by the government, and only allowed to those it deems satisfactory is fundamentally wrong.

The entire idea of the enterprise has always been the death of a thousand cuts, where the restrictions on who can buy, and where, and how and what are continually increased until the number of gun owners is reduced to political insignificance.

[BitWielder1]

This is so we can do all we can collectively to make sure children aren’t taken down by stray bullets...

Education. Explain to the fear mongers how guns are used by responsible people, i.e. hardly at all.
No law abiding citizen would fire their gun downtown except in defense against an obvious threat.
They try to portray gun owners as nuts who would go around playing with guns and shooting willy-nilly. Not so.
Actual gun use: On a firing range, when hunting (rifle) and in defense.