Here is at least part of story the article is commenting on since the link they provide in the first paragraph no longer seems to be operating:
Firm's president gripped by guilt
"Blessed are the peacemakers..."
Posted on 09/05/2003 12:46:12 PM PDT by Terriergal
Chicago reporters and pols are obsessed with the gun used in last week's workplace shooting. From the Sun Times:
[Acting Chicago Police Superintendent Phil] Cline said Tapia had a Walther .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol and "at least one extra clip.'' Cline described it as "an older model gun.'' The weapon is small and easily concealed, designed for plainclothes officers.According to later stories, the weapon was a Walther PP (not the PPK/S I originally guessed).
The Walther PP is one of the older members of a very well-known family of small, German-made semiautomatic pistols. The .380 caliber (aka 9mm kurz), is a mediocre round, at best. Pretty much the only reason people use it is because the guns tend to be very small and easily concealable. Today, the rationale for carrying a gun in .380 is getting weaker, as manufacturers are coming up with some truly tiny semiautos in 9mm, such as the Kahr PM9 or the Taurus Millenium. The .380 is a less powerful round than the 9mm (little loved by the blogosphere's rezident armorer, who refers to it as the 9mm wussy Europellet). It is less powerful than the .38. It is much less powerful than the 40 S&W, much less powerful than the .45 ACP, and much much less powerful than the .357 Magnum or .44 Magnum -- and those are just the most common calibers.
There. Even if you knew nothing about firearms before today, you now know more than the entire staff of the Chicago Sun Times. To wit:
A gun made for plainclothes cops because of its big firepower and small size was the weapon Salvador Tapia brandished Wednesday.Big firepower. I doubt most reporters would recognize big firepower if it shot them in the ass.
The Chicago media's obsession with the gun used in this case would be amusing if it weren't so tragic. As it turns out, the last two known owners of the pistol were both Chicago police officers. Neither of the officers (both of whom are now dead) bothered to register the weapon pursuant to Chicago's handgun ordinance. Ironic, since as police officers, they were among the only people who could register a newly acquired handgun in the Chicago Reich. It's unclear how the gun passed to Tapia.
A lot of so-called "moderates" on gun control say that only paranoid gun nuts could possibly oppose gun registration. "You have to register your car, after all...." Law abiding citizens have "nothing to worry about."
Oh yeah?
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced the weapon to the Blue Island Gun Shop, which received the gun from the manufacturer in 1966 and sold it to Milton R. Beuck. The last official record of the gun was 1983, when Beuck registered it legally in Chicago. [Before the Chicago gun ordinance went into effect later that same year--Ed.]Got that? This poor mope, Beuck, legally buys a gun, probably some time around 1966-67. He keeps the gun for 15 years or so, without incident, at which time he promptly complies with Chicago's unconstitutional gun ordinance and registers his gun with the City in 1983. He keeps the gun for another decade or so, until 1994, at which time he legally sells it to a cop. Nine years later, and after at least two police officers have ignored the gun ordinance, a career violent criminal (in violation of a half dozen state laws and City ordinances) somehow gets ahold of the gun and kills several coworkers. The cops track down Beuck, now homeless, and ask him about the gun. Beuck cooperates, tells the police what he knows, but because this homeless man cannot now produce records regarding the sale of his gun nine years ago, Beuck gets sent to Cook County Jail on $100,000 bond!
Beuck told police he had sold it to a Chicago police officer, identified by sources as Schott, at a bar in 1994, Bayless said. The police officer sold the gun to a second officer sometime between 1994 and 1997, according to a friend of the first officer. The second officer died in 2002 and it is unclear what became of the gun, Bayless said.
"It was not registered and it should have been," he said.
On Thursday, police charged Beuck, who is 58 and homeless, with a misdemeanor for failing to keep records of the gun, authorities said. In Bond Court Friday, Cook County Judge Marvin Luckman ordered him held on $100,000 bond and assigned him to the Cermak Hospital division of Cook County Jail.
The high bond was ordered because of the seriousness of the eventual crime in which the gun was used and because there was an outstanding drunken driving warrant for Beuck, said Jerry Lawrence, a spokesman for the Cook County state's attorney's office.
There is an 18-month statute of limitations on the misdemeanor charge, Lawrence said, but because the law requires a gun owner to maintain records for 10 years, Beuck was currently violating the law by not maintaining a record of the 1994 sale through next year.
You gotta wonder what would have happened if the authorities had shown as much interest in locking up the murderer, Tapia, after any of his more than a dozen arrests as they did in locking away a 58 year old homeless guy who couldn't come up with the paperwork documenting a gun he sold nine years ago.
Also in response to the shooting, the Chicago Police have also set up a hotline for people to call in anonymous tips about Chicago citizens who may have unregistered guns in their homes. (No, I'm not going to link to it).
This story illustrates three important lessons:
1. Pro-gun "moderates" often say that the answer to gun-crime is to enforce the laws already on the books. Unfortunately, that includes a lot of horrible, unconstitutional, evil laws. Let's prosecute people who commit crimes with guns: not people whose only "offense" is exercising their Constitutional and natural law right to own guns;
2. Only a fool would ever purposely comply with a law requiring gun registration; and
3. Mayor Richard M. Daley is a festering canker on the putrid shit-encrusted bunghole that is the City of Chicago. Good people should live somewhere else.
Here is at least part of story the article is commenting on since the link they provide in the first paragraph no longer seems to be operating:
Firm's president gripped by guilt
"Blessed are the peacemakers..."
If they had pulled over Tapia with a sub machine gun in 1989 as stated in the story, he should still be in jail for a felony weapons charge.
2 chicago cops with a throw away & now this homeless man gets to make bail . Lovely . The way the laws are written it never made sense for me to register my firearms .
I never will either .
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