The editors of the Chicago Tribune via Yahoo call for the enforcement of Illinois’s gun laws:
As Illinois Democrats continue to seek a ban on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines after the Highland Park massacre on July 4, critics of gun safety laws voice a familiar rebuttal:
Why pass new gun laws, opponents argue, when so many existing laws aren’t being enforced?
That’s a good question, but it dodges another, yet more obvious question: Why aren’t the existing laws being enforced?
That’s the question properly raised in a lawsuit filed by parents, including Shanice Mathews, a West Side mother of four. She’s the named plaintiff in Mathews v. State of Illinois, a suit filed by her and other parents on behalf of their children and others in a proposed class of Black children who the parents say have been traumatized by living in neighborhoods plagued by high gun violence.
The defendants are the state of Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the Illinois State Police.
and
Illinois is known to have some of the toughest gun laws and regulations that the Constitution allows. But if FOID files are not kept up to date and related regulations are not rigorously enforced, the state’s citizens are not adequately protected.
The question they ask bears repeating: why aren’t the existing laws being enforced?
My view is that the undermining of the rule of law through laws that are routinely not enforced overwhelms any deterrent value those laws might have.
The cynical answer, I guess, is that proponents of tough gun control laws don’t really care about the matter one way or another. They do want the issue to run on.
The whole gun violence problem is actually a black violence problem. It is not possible to enforce gun laws in black underclass neighborhoods, in part because many politicians are in business with the black gangs that control the streets. Also, after the riots that followed the deaths of several petty criminals resisting arrest, the police are reluctant to go into those neighborhoods and enforce laws against the gangs.
The focus on so-called assault rifles (they ain’t) and large capacity magazines for them is another misdirection. Gang bangers almost always use 9 mm automatic pistols, because they are easily concealable and easy to carry. Death by rifle is about as rare as death by knife or strangulation. The 9’s are the instrument of choice.
By the way, people often focus attention on the drug trade, and the connection of local gangs to the international smuggling network. Admittedly, there are huge profits to be shared out, and local officials and police can easily be bribed. But there is another source of money: human trafficking. All those “unaccompanied” children are actually being shepherded by the coyotes who also move the drugs. These children have been (or will be) sold to pedophiles here in the US as sex slaves. Considering the large numbers of pedophiles in our federal, state, and local governments and in the entertainment business (especially Disney) that is another inducement to ignore the gangs.
Organized crime everywhere provides public goods and services that would not otherwise be unavailable: loans, gambling, prostitution, drugs, hitmen… These goods and services are not secrets, although they are offered discretely, and normal people can readily find them if they want to. Cops, public officials, and even the press know about them, too, and they have a pretty good idea of who, what, and when. The infamous Whitey Bulger (brother of the Speaker of the MA House, later Pres. UMass) was actually protected by agents in the Boston FBI office, some of whom later participated in Russiagate.
The alliance of politicians, judges, cops and criminals is cemented together by huge amounts of money, goods and services, and therein is the whole problem.
then there are prosecutors that decline charges when a traffic stop finds a gun during a search of the car. As everyone these stops are motivated by racism and invalid.
BTW, noticed that if your Illinois Firearms ID is revoked, you are supposed to dispose of your weapons and file the appropriate paperwork. I see the Illinois state police did a crackdown about a month ago, timing is probably just a coincidence.