-By Warner Todd Huston
Cook County is at it again, trying to make legal gun owners as uncomfortable as possible. The Cook County Board of Commissioners is working on their latest unconstitutional set of gun laws and one particular idea they want to implement shows how disingenuous lawmakers can be.
As Kane County Chronicle columnist Steve Sarley writes:
This new legislation, if passed, would not allow gun dealers within 15 miles of another dealer, even if the other dealer was in a different county. Gun dealers also would be unable to be located within a mile of any public or private school, a mile from any church or place of worship, home for the aged, indigent or veterans, military stations or public parks.
In Illinois there is already a three day waiting period to purchase a handgun so, what logical sense does this one mile proscription make? Is that one mile distance from gun store to school supposed to make it harder for a gun crime to occur? Can we expect that this one mile proscription would make the distance harder to traverse after the three days a gun buyer had to wait before getting the gun? If such a buyer was going to use that gun he had to wait three days for in a crime, what difference does that one mile make if he was willing to wait three days before putting his criminal plan into action in the first place?
And anyone who can’t figure out how to make it the one mile between a gun shop and a school… well, no law will help such a stupid person in any case.
But, look closer at the list of places that a one mile proscription affects. In fact, in a populated urban area, a gun shop would be illegal just about anywhere using such criteria. Parks, Churches, public and private schools… these things are around practically every corner of any US city and the cities in Cook County aren’t any exception.
In effect, if this unconstitutional ordinance is passed, new gun stores will be illegal everywhere. This law may as well have been written to say that no gun store may be opened under the bright blue skies countywide. These lawmakers, while pretending that they are only looking out for the children, are effectively outlawing all gun shops. Under the guise of helping the children they are hiding their real goal.
Every upstanding gun owner in Cook County should vigorously oppose this travesty.
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
Leave it up to Illinois to try and take the easy way out. After all, it seems to be easier for our legislatiors to rewrite the Constitution than it is to step up the prosecution of illegal gun possession and sales. Just because Cocaine is illegal hasn’t stopped drug addicts from using it and selling it.
Just another example of the Democrats in leadership roles in the State of Illinois. So where is Jesse Jackson an the ACLU? The NRA should be all over this!!