Handgun proposal means Chicago mayor won't run for governor (IL)

Rahm Emanuel does not plan to run for governor of Illinois. Not in 2014. Not ever. His proposal last week to register all Illinois handguns made it obvious.

I'm sure that Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, wouldn't consider taking the step down to governor anyway — not any more than his predecessor, Richard M. Daley.

You can be sure that Chicago mayors do see it as a demotion. Only one has ever stooped down to the Governor's Mansion and that was almost a century ago: ex-Mayor Edward Fitzsimmons Dunne served as governor from 1913-17.

No wonder. Chicago mayors wield enormous power in city and state matters, and some enjoy the longevity of kings. Note that five Illinois governors came and went during Daley's tenure.

Whether Emanuel plans to burrow in forever is anybody's guess. He is, you'll recall, the former congressman who served as the first chief of staff for President Barack Obama. He also is the brother of Hollywood talent agent Ari Emanuel, whom the feds said was a target for a shakedown by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

That was a gunless crime, of course. Rahm Emanuel drew notice last week with a fresh frontal assault on the other kind. It makes him a pariah to a lot of downstaters and could leave a fellow Democrat, Gov. Pat Quinn, in a pickle.

Emanuel wants a law making all Illinois handgun owners register — and pay a $65 fee for — each pistol in the name of providing a safer Chicago. The city already requires its own residents to register firearms.

With guns regulated locally — and notwithstanding thousands of illicit guns obviously circulating in Chicago already — the Windy City Hall is baying for relief from what it says are crimes committed with weapons obtained elsewhere in Illinois.

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.

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