Posted on 01/18/2006 10:37:29 AM PST by neverdem
Both plan to make it top priority this year
After several failed attempts to pass a statewide ban on assault weapons, Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said Tuesday they will make the initiative a top priority in the current session of the state legislature.
In a joint news conference, the two Chicago Democrats called on the General Assembly to support their proposal to ban the manufacture, sale and possession of semi-automatic and .50-caliber weapons.
Blagojevich said his plan would do away with some of the most powerful guns on the market, and that it therefore doesn't affect the rights of law-abiding gun owners who want weapons for self-defense or hunting--a point vigorously put forth by gun-rights groups.
"We don't need to have TEC-9 assault weapons, Uzis or AK-47s to protect our homes, protect our neighborhoods or to go hunting," Blagojevich said. "And you certainly don't need the .50 caliber sniper rifle to do anything but act as a terrorist and be a criminal and a gangbanger."
The governor will make a pitch directly to the General Assembly when it convenes for his annual State of the State Address on Wednesday. That speech comes two years after the expiration of the federal ban on assault weapons, after Congress failed to re-enact it.
Even before the expiration, law enforcement officials and gun-control advocates have been trying to enact some form of assault-weapons ban at the state level. Seven states have done so but in Illinois, efforts have failed by a handful of votes.
Still, Blagojevich and Daley think there may be some momentum behind their efforts. Last year, lawmakers sided with gun-control groups on several votes, including one to require background checks for all sales at gun shows.
Daley said the next step is to get rid of assault...
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Come on over! I need help cleaning my guns ;) Oh I mean "assault weapons"... We have concealed carry too...
We really do need to get this issue before SCOTUS again.....but we'll need to wait until there are more original-intent votes up there to help Justices Scalia and Thomas.
I'm afraid Judge Alito isn't going to be much help on gun control, based on his remarks to the committee. He discussed a firearms case he was involved with, and neither in the opinion he was defending nor in his remarks about it did he once bring up the Second Amendment.
Furthermore, handguns might spray numbers of energetic rounds, but their accuracy is a problem downrange.
During the 1992 riots, Korean shopkeepers blasted away at looters with their double-stacker autopistols in a famous videotaped scene. They chased off the would-be looters, but a Latin woman carrying two sacks of groceries home almost a mile away stopped an errant round with her forehead and died. The odds against her getting hit were astronomical, but in fact she was indeed struck and killed.
They're about $ 7,000 each from your local FFL.
OTOH, drug dealers can probably afford them more easily than you or I, just as, ironically, Frank Nitti's boys could easily have afforded the $200 transfer tax on their Thompsons, proving that the Sullivan Act was mostly eyewash, and no substantial bar to gunsels' possession of submachineguns.
The real squeeze on criminals is their loss of civil rights, that felonizes their possession of firearms.
For about $300 you can get a good SKS in 7.62 x 39MM, a case of hollow-point ammo and some cleaning supplies. It ain't an M14 but it sure beats no rifle. A bandolier and some stripper clips are cheap too.
For similar money you can get a reconditioned Tokarev SVT40 in the much more potent 7.62x54(R) -- 10-round box magazine, adjustable gas-recoil regulator, and the Germans traded their Mausers for them every chance they got. A poor man's SVD.
That's the only thing they understand.
Well, let's hope Illinois' neighbor's governor, Doyle in Wisconsin, gets his veto on concealed carry shoved right where the sun don't shine.
Here in NY Pataki doesn't think too much of gun rights either.
After Wisconsin passes the concealed carry bill, I predict there will be a mass exodus of career criminals headed south from Milwaukee.
Illinois residents use the NRA website to email your reps if you do not know their address or if you do not even know who your rep is. Enough of the facist gun controllers with their punish the innocent, pardon the criminal behavior.
Yeah, but at least in New York state (by that I'm leaving out the city and L.I.) I thought a person could reasonably expect to be able to get a carry permit. Am I wrong? Where I live, you take a class, pass a background check and that's it. I consider both Pataki and Guiliani both to be Democrats and neither would ever get my vote for anything. I'd stay home first. Of course, the Republican Party is so stupid that they won't figure that out until after they fail miserably trying to get one of them elected on a national basis.
In rural Upstate NY it can still be complicated to get a permit, you have to jump through a whole bunch of hoops but it's not impossible. Pataki has been trying relentlessly to make it even harder. On this issue he acts like a democrat and it's exactly why he or any other anti-gun politician doesn't stand a chance of winning national elections. That type of politics may play well in liberal NYC but try it in the South or West.
My family escaped from NY 42 years ago. Sadly, most of them are still subjects of the Peoples' Republic of Maryland. I, however, am blessed to have found myself (through no good or well-thought out plan of my own) much more free in Tennessee.
No slippery slope. No, none. Just common sense.
"Blagojevich said his plan would do away with some of the most powerful guns on the market, and that it therefore doesn't affect the rights of law-abiding gun owners who want weapons for self-defense or hunting--a point vigorously put forth by gun-rights groups".
Strictly speaking, the 2nd amendment does not directly deal with my right for a firearm for self defense or the defense of my individual home. It deals with my ability to effectively participate as an appropriately armed member of a citizen militia which the constitution says is necessary to the security of a free state. This includes those types of firearms which are appropriate for an individual soldier called up for militia duty. Today that firearm is a selective fire assault rifle and and/or a semi auto handgun.
Since full auto versions are effectively banned, than I can make do with a semi auto one.
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