Last week a lawsuit that was filed in Chicago in 2018 was given the green light to proceed in the Federal courts which could possibly provide a new and different approach to reducing gun violence beyond what has now become a rather hackneyed and useless argument about how gun violence is a ‘public health threat.’
The suit names the Governor of Illinois and the Illinois State Police as defendants. It claims they are violating the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) because gun violence in Chicago creates emotional trauma that is responsible for ‘trauma-related disabilities’ in children, chief among them being cognitive and emotional functions which control learning and the ability to communicate properly with other kids. It’s a class-action suit brought by the mother of a 9-year old boy who saw his father gunned down in the street, and includes many other children living in what can only be described as Chicago’s war zone; i.e., the neighborhoods that have seen over 500 murders this year alone.
The suit names the Governor and the State Police as defendants because it argues that the gun violence which violates the ADA is the result of lax enforcement of the laws that cover the behavior of gun retailers around Chicago, thus resulting in guns that are first sold legally but then trafficked illegally into the neighborhoods where so many shootings take place. The suit lists 11 remedies that should be instituted in licensed gun shops, including the installation of video systems, inventory audits and more training of store personnel.
This lawsuit builds on a state law, ‘Combating Illegal Gun Trafficking Act,’ which took effect at the beginning of this year and requires all gun dealers in Illinois to install security systems, keep more comprehensive records of sales and submit to annual inventory audits, as well as only hiring staff who are licensed to own guns. The lawsuit basically claims that the state government and the state police have been lax in enforcing this new law, the proof cited is the extraordinary level of gun violence on the Windy City’s streets.
The problem with this lawsuit is that it assumes a causal connection between how well the government fulfills its regulatory responsibilities as listed in the law which took effect at the beginning of this year and the level of gun violence which occurs on the West Side and South Side of Chicago every day. In other words, if gun violence continues at its current horrific pace, this must be somehow tied to lax enforcement of the new law. The lawsuit cites data which shows that 40% of the ‘crime guns’ picked up by the Chicago P.D. were first purchased in gun shops located in suburbs around the city; hence, with stronger enforcement this flow of guns into high-crime neighborhoods would go down.
Maybe it would and maybe it wouldn’t. Like so many other laws which seek to prevent a specific commodity from reaching a specific market, the Illinois gun dealer law doesn’t take into account the issue of demand. And as governments have discovered since the sixteenth century when the Valois Monarchy tried to regulate the commerce of salt, if people want something badly enough, they’ll find a way to get around any law which tries to control supply.
This is the reason that I refer above to the ‘hackneyed’ arguments about gun violence being bandied about by my friends in public health. Because again and again I hear the gun-control community demanding that we enact stronger laws to keep guns out of the ‘wrong hands.’ But what if the size of the wrong-handed population keeps going up?
As long as songs like ‘Bullets Ain’t Got No Name’ are best-sellers on the hip-hop charts, the idea that guns will somehow disappear from high-violence neighborhoods because we pass another regulation is not only a joke, but demonstrates just how far away from reality the discussion about gun violence has moved.
Want to get rid of gun violence? Get rid of the you-know-whats, okay?
Dec 16, 2019 @ 12:56:38
“Get rid of the you-know-whats, okay?” I’m afraid I don’t know. People have civil rights, so you can’t just get rid of them. So, get rid of the guns?
Dec 17, 2019 @ 10:34:22
People who are against the 2nd Amendment are against all the other Amendments. Remember Michael Bloomberg not only wants to ban guns, but he was also the champion of Stop and Frisk which was ruled a blatant violation of the 4th Amendment. If you don’t have respect for one law, why would you respect the others?
Dec 16, 2019 @ 14:30:22
Mike, just so we’re clear on this, what are the “you-know-whats”?
Dec 16, 2019 @ 15:14:21
The Glocks and other hi-cap pistols and tactical shotguns which cause all the gun violence and have nothing to do with hunting or sporting uses of guns.
Dec 17, 2019 @ 10:32:00
But how dare we call you anti-gun! You understand low capacity pistols, and manually operated sporting guns have really fallen into specialty sporting gear today.
The C8 corvette looks really cool, and it is a sporting car, but it sucks at getting groceries, picking the kids up from school or hauling trash to the dump, hence why the Honda Accord and the Ford F-150 will outsell the Vette by orders of magnitude. Same goes with bolt action rifles vs AR-pattern guns, and while S&W makes some damn amazing revolvers, they’re cranking out and selling way more pistols in their M&P line.
So while you think you’re preserving “traditional firearms” what you’re actually doing is calling for bans on what amounts to the vast majority of guns in American hands, and certainly the most practical ones.
Not to mention completely ignoring the 2nd Amendment, and while you have said multiple times that you don’t care about 2A, that doesn’t make it irrelevant.
Dec 16, 2019 @ 19:13:33
At least in NM, the state constitution includes the right of self defense in our RKBA provision. Plus, the 2A was about militia service, not hunting or sport shooting. So if the 2A still means something, it implies weapons with a reasonable relationship to militia service, as the Miller decision said. Still, nothing precludes regulation. One does not want a member of the universal/well-regulated militia equally likely to shoot up the neighborhood church as shoot at the enemy.
Dec 16, 2019 @ 19:31:55
Oh, yes, those “tactical shotguns”. My kid brother wanted to turn my 870 into a “tactical shotgun”. Good lord. Told my old man to hide it until I got up there. Flew home and put it in a case along with the Mod 70 and flew it back to New Mexico.