Committee OKs 120-day grace for registering guns

Chicago Sun-Times
June 4, 2008

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter

What started as a month-long amnesty tailor-made for a powerful alderman who forgot to register his guns has turned into a 120-day grace period for every Chicagoan who ever owned a registered gun here.

The City Council's Police Committee agreed today to re-open gun registration in Chicago -- and not in the narrow manner proposed by Ald. Richard Mell (33rd).

A former hunter, Mell proposed a one-month amnesty after he forgot to re-register his arsenal of shotguns, rifles and pistols as required every year by the ordinance he helped to pass.

It would have applied, only to gun owners who attempted to re-register their guns between May 1, 2007 and April 1, 2008 only to be rejected on grounds the registrations had lapsed.

The ordinance approved today quadruples the amnesty period. If approved by the full Council, it would apply to everybody who "possesses a firearm that was at one time validly registered to that person in the city of Chicago."

Police Committee Chairman Isaac Carothers (29th) said the prior wording appeared to be tailor-made "for an individual."

"I thought it was unfair," Carothers said.

Referring to Mell, Carothers said, "He was the impetus for it. ... He messed up. But, it opened up a much larger door. We discovered that this effects many more people than him. It also affects retired police officers."

Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th) added, "Clearly, if it's down to only 200,000 firearms that are registered now, there's something wrong. It was double that ten years ago and even more than that years [before]. It started out as only a handgun registry. Now, it's a shotgun registry. It's time to take a look at it."

Fraternal Order of Police President Mark Donahue, who had decried the "double-standard" created by Mell's original proposal, testified in favor of the revised version.

Mell has been ridiculed for changing the law when he found himself in violation of it.

Today, he made it a point to say that he's been "inundated" with "hundreds" of e-mails and phone calls from war veterans, retired police officers and other gun owners in the same boat he is.

"We're talking about law-abiding people who ... now feel like they're criminals if they didn't take the gun out of the city. Some of 'em still have the gun in the closet or in a safe somewhere in their home and they feel wrong about this. This is their ability to correct it," the alderman said.

He added, "If for some reason I didn't ... have my drivers license renewed properly, I couldn't drive in Chicago for the rest of my life. That's what they're telling you: 'Turn the gun into the Police Department or take it out of the city.' That's your choice."

OUT OF

Sounds like a ruling class to me

Again, all animals are created equal, some are just more equal than others

The land of the free and home of the brave.

Used to be a neat slogan.  Too bad it's a fucking punchline to a joke now.  

Quoted: Again, all animals are created equal, some are just more equal than others

+1

Isn't one of the Presidential candidates from this great bastion of democracy? So this is how it will work in 08-12