Daley Might Drop Gun Ban But Paves the Way for Onerous Restrictions

The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that Mayor Daley might be starting to listen to a few people other than his cadre of anti-gun big city mayors and Chicagoan sycophants when it comes to the city's handgun ban. As newspaper editors warn him not to waste city money on legal fees for a losing position, Daley is starting to hint that it might be time to comply with the Heller ruling. It was only a week ago that he was stating that he was essentially above the law when it came to compliance with a decision contrary to his politics:

I don't look at this lightly [and say], 'Oh, because the Supreme Court [overturned Washington's handgun ban], we're just gonna dismiss it and, all the sudden, people can arm themselves.'

Forgive me, Mr. Mayor, but that is precisely what the ruling means! Though he might be starting to budge on the issue, any changes are likely to come with DC-style restrictions, outlandish classifications of standard handguns, and endless layers of bureaucracy. Daley was pretty clear in his ranting as to what could be subject to continued restriction:

How many guns do you have -- 50, 60? Can they have a .357 Magnum? Can they have ammunition that will go through a wall? What is the liability of the owners? ... Do you have to have insurance if you have a gun? How much ammunition can you have if there's a fire?

He also uses the safety of first responders as cheap plea to protect the safety of his draconian laws:

We're talking about putting first-responders in a very, very delicate position of people being armed without being notified how many guns they have in their homes," Daley said. "We have to be able to fashion a law that truly protects first-responders and protects the citizens.

Firearms in the hands of honest citizens does not all of a sudden put Chicago first responders in some sort of new and unmitigated dangers. I sometimes tire of sounding like a broken record, and I am sure many other gun advocates do as well, but here it goes one more time: The people in Chicago that put police and firefighters in danger have no regard for the law. They will possess and carry firearms in spite of the law, and will not succumb to any sort of registration or regulation that the city may impose. Of course, Mayor Daley has no qualms about sounding like a broken record when he reiterates the empty scare tactics that the anti-gun crowd has been spewing for the last 30 years:

Daley called it a "frightening" ruling that hearkens "back to the Old West."

Every time a law is passed that errs on the side of individual gun rights, no matter how sweeping nor how minute, the Old West blood-on-the-streets image in invoked. Unfortunately for Mayor Daley and all Chicagoans, the nearest place playing out like the Old West is gang-controlled South Chicago - a problem which handgun prohibition has patently ineffective at containing. In his tenure as mayor, Daley has done a terrible job of keeping citizens and first responders out of harm's way. By continuing to keep law abiding citizens disarmed, he has defied the will of the majority of the population, disregarded the opinions of rank-and-file police organizations across the country, and ignored the lessons learned by almost every state in the union.