Thread: Conservatives and NRA Silent as Trump Sends in Feds for Chicago Gun Confiscations

Conservatives and NRA Silent as Trump Sends in Feds for Chicago Gun Grab

July 7, 2017 at 4:46 pm Written by Adam Dick

(RPI) Chicago police are keeping busy confiscating “illegal guns.” Last year through the summer, the confiscations were occurring at a rate of one every 59 minutes according to Chicago Police Department figures related by Mark Berman in an October 2016 Washington Post article. This summer, the Chicago police will have some assistance from the United States government in racking up impressive gun confiscation numbers.

Following through on a plan that began its development during the Obama administration, the Trump administration and Chicago Police Department announced last week the sending of the Chicago Crime Gun Strike Force, involving an additional 20 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents plus equipment, to Chicago to aid city police, as well as state and US prosecutors, in a crackdown on illegal guns and the people who possess them.

Gun confiscation has been a big project in the city for years. In the May 27, 2014 Chicago Mayor’s Office and Chicago Police Department report “Tracing the Guns: The Impact of Illegal Guns on Violence in Chicago,” a comparison was made between gun confiscation numbers in Chicago and such numbers in Los Angeles and New York City. The report relates that the 7,624 guns the Chicago Police Department confiscated in 2012 amounted to more per capita than the gun confiscations by police in New York City and Los Angeles combined.

You may wonder what an illegal gun is. US law prohibits gun possession by individuals in certain classes of people, such as people who possess illegal drugs. US law also places special limits on the possession of certain types of guns. The US government, for example, bars people from owning fully automatic firearms, except for some such guns that may be possessed after permission is obtained from and a fee is paid to the US government. Similarly, the US government imposes a minimum barrel length requirement for shotguns. Remember when Randy Weaver and his family were subjected at their home to a US government siege? Back in 1989, an undercover ATF agent convinced Randy Weaver to sell a couple “sawed-off shotguns” allegedly in violation of US law. Weaver then did not appear in court in regard to the entrapment-derived gun charges on the correct day after a notice with the wrong date had been sent.

Further US government actions included the killing of Weaver’s son and wife and the siege of the family’s Idaho home.

“Illegal guns” take on a broader meaning in Chicago. In addition to US government laws, state laws expand the scope or what is included in the category of illegal guns. In Illinois, people are even required to obtain from the state police a Firearm Owners Identification card (FOID card) to legally possess a gun or ammunition. Further, legislation signed into law in August by Governor Bruce Rauner makes it a felony for someone without a FOID card to bring a gun into Illinois from any other state in order to sell, deliver, or transfer the gun. The new law is argued to be necessary to stop people from buying guns in other states where gun laws are less restrictive and then bringing the guns in to Illinois, and to Chicago in particular. And Illinois gun restrictions extend beyond these measures. The pro-gun-control Law Center to Prevent Violence so approves the state’s gun control efforts that, in its Gun Law State Scorecard, it ranks Illinois eighth out of the fifty states.

In an October 19, 2016 presidential campaign debate against Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump criticized gun control in Chicago in response to a question regarding his opposition to limits on either assault weapons of high-capacity magazines and his support for a national right to carry law.

Trump suggested that gun control is not the solution to violence in the city. In particular, Trump declared that, “In Chicago, which has the toughest gun laws in the United States, probably you could say by far, they have more gun violence than any other city.” Making his position on guns more clear, Trump followed up with this statement: “I am a very strong supporter of the Second Amendment.” Yet, here is Trump less than a year later sending in a newly created ATF strike force to help Chicago police confiscate guns (and to further punish the people who have possessed those guns), all in the name of reducing violence in the city. An explanation is in order.

Even if the US government attempts to prevent the ATF from aiding in the confiscation of guns based on state and local gun control measures, the ATF’s integrated action with the local police and state prosecutors on gun matters can be expected to unavoidably aid such confiscations, as well as related arrests and prosecutions. Now imagine a totally independent ATF presence in Chicago focused on enforcing only US gun laws — a much different mandate than the one that has been presented to the public. Under such a mandate, the ATF’s actions would still significantly aid the local and state gun confiscation and prosecution efforts. The ATF, by taking on some gun matters that the Chicago police and state prosecutors would otherwise deal with, would free up resources so that these police and prosecutors can engage in more gun confiscations and prosecutions related to alleged state and local law violations than they otherwise could.

To the extent the ATF is assisting in enforcing gun control laws that go beyond US gun control laws, it is acting in contravention of the US government’s gun policy. Consider state and local police in states that have legalized medical or recreational marijuana. They would be acting properly if they refuse to assist the US government in advancing the enforcing of US marijuana laws against people who are acting in compliance with the liberalized state laws.

Similarly, agents of the US government should not assist state prosecutors or local police in enforcing gun laws that are more restrictive than the gun laws that have been adopted via the US government’s legislative process.

It would be naïve to trust that Chicago will be the only city in which we will see the Trump administration inserting US government agents to help local police. Sending the ATF strike force to Chicago appears to be a test case for Trump who campaigned on, and has promoted since his early days in the presidency, bringing “law and order” to cities where he says there is too much murder or violent crime. How far might Trump escalate US government involvement, in Chicago and beyond? Ron Paul, in a Monday Ron Paul Liberty Report discussion of the Trump administration’s Chicago actions, suggested the US government may in the future even send in the US military and implement martial law in the name of fighting crime in America.

There has yet to be any outcry from conservative or gun rights groups over Trump’s federalized gun grab in Chicago. Can you imagine what would have happened if Obama had done this?

http://theantimedia.org/trump-feds-chicago-gun-grab/

Trump Sends in Feds to Battle Chicago’s Crime Wave


‘Send In The Feds’: Trump Launches Chicago Gun Violence Task Force

JUNE 21, 2016
Where Do All The Illegal Guns In Chicago Come From?

by James Dimeas



The gun violence in Chicago has been the source of concern among the citizens and politicians in Illinois for a long time.

Every day we are inundated with news of shootings and homicides throughout the City. When the weather heats up we know that the number of shootings will go up.

On Monday morning we open the paper to find out how many people were shot and how many were killed over the weekend.

In the effort to come up with a way to stop all the shootings, we need to understand how illegal guns are making their way to the streets of Chicago. Illinois has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the United States.

To own a gun in your home, Illinois requires that you get a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) Card which requires that a thorough background search be conducted by the Illinois State Police. FOID cards can be revoked for good cause by the Illinois State Police.

Citizens are generally not allowed to carry a gun outside their home unless they have an FOID Card and are legally transporting it, or they obtain a Conceal and Carry Permit.

To obtain a Conceal and Carry Permit you have to apply to the Illinois State Police, submit to a thorough background search and supply your fingerprints, and attend and complete gun training classes.

Illinois was the last state to allow conceal and carry, and that was only after the Federal Courts ordered Illinois to do this. In spite of some of the nation’s strictest gun laws, Chicago has established a reputation as America’s deadliest city.

Chicago Police report that in 2015, over 2,900 people were shot and 470 people were murdered. So far in 2016, there have been about 311 homicides and at least 1810 people shot on the streets of Chicago.

These statistics, coupled with the strict Illinois gun laws, has become an example cited by gun rights activists to argue that gun control legislation doesn’t work. But a closer look at some of the evidence concerning where these guns are coming from tells us a different story.

According to the FBI, roughly 60% of guns used in crimes in Illinois were from out of state.

The overwhelming number of those guns flow into Illinois from states that have much less restrictive gun laws.

Most of those out of state guns came from Indiana, which is next to Illinois.

Second place goes to Mississippi and third place goes to Wisconsin.

The FBI data suggests that there’s lots of trafficking of guns within Illinois but point out that it’s very difficult to trace those guns once they get into the state because Illinois does not require registration of guns, does not license or regulate gun dealers, doesn’t limit how many guns can be sold at one time and does not require background searches on gun sales that are not conducted at a gun show.

Indiana has really lax gun laws.

Gun dealers are required to perform a very basic background search while a vendor can sell their “private collection” to anyone at a gun show without any background search whatsoever.

So someone can buy an assault rifle at a Crown Point Indiana gun show without any background search, and drive an hour into Chicago, where assault rifles are banned.

A 2015 study by the University of Chicago suggested that only 11% of guns involved in crimes in Chicago were purchased through federally licensed gun dealers, which require background searches.

In 2014 the Chicago Police reported that roughly 60% of guns used and recovered from crime scenes between 2009 and 2013 were purchased outside of Illinois.

Exact figures are hard to pin down but it is clear that the vast majority of guns making their way to the streets of Chicago are coming from outside of Illinois.

The significance of these figures is that unless national standards are imposed, there’s no law or amount of regulation in Illinois that is going to stop guns from making their way into Chicago and being used in shootings and murders.

Instead of gun rights activists pointing to Illinois strict gun laws to argue that they don’t work, they should point to states that have lax gun laws as an example of why such laws are needed to stop, or at least slow down, the rising numbers of shootings and murders in Chicago.

James Dimeas is an award winning Chicago criminal defense attorney and author with more than 23 years of experience aggressively representing his clients in UUW cases.

If you have a UUW case in Illinois, contact me in Chicago (312-229-5500), DuPage and Kane (630-504-2096) or Lake (847-696-6458) for a free and confidential consultation to discuss your legal options.

https://www.chicagocriminaldefensela...m-chicago.html

Naive maybe, but aren't we once again putting the onus on the gun and not the problem or the person?

Maybe it will cut down on crime, maybe not, but probably not to a huge degree.

Why don't they try to figure out why there is so much crime?

Does crime exist because there are guns, or do guns exist because there is crime?

Not saying this is a bad thing - I just don't see it healing the disease.