[Chicag Tribune] In December, a panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Illinois' ban on carrying concealed weapons in public was unconstitutional. "A right to bear arms thus implies a right to carry a loaded gun outside the home," Judge Richard Posner wrote in the majority opinion.
"A gun is a potential danger to more people if carried in public than just kept in the home," he wrote. "But the other side of this coin is that knowing that many law-abiding citizens are walking the streets armed may make criminals timid."
Posner directed Illinois politicians to fashion a law that lifts the complete ban on carrying guns in public. The judge didn't tell them how to do that, but he told them when they had to get it done. He set a deadline: 180 days.
More than half that time has passed, but politicians have not found much consensus on a concealed carry bill. Gun rights advocates want a broad, permissive law. Gun control advocates want, well, they don't really want any law. But faced with the order of the court, they're focused on creating a fairly restrictive law.
So what law can pass the Legislature and the scrutiny of the courts?
The U.S. Supreme Court gave a welcome signal this week. It declined to review a federal appellate court ruling that upheld the constitutionality of New York state's concealed carry law, considered one of the more restrictive in the nation.
New York is a "may-issue" state. That is, local law enforcement officials may grant concealed carry permits, but they have broad authority to deny permits to applicants who don't demonstrate that they have a special need for protection. In New York City, most applicants are denied. Business owners who want to carry a loaded weapon or hire armed security guards must furnish, among other things, tax and banking records.
Which means that the favored get permits and the chumbalones do not. The politicians like it this way since they get to dispense the favors...
So there's a template for Illinois, where public safety issues in Chicago are vastly different from, say, Shelby County.
The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't set a precedent for the nation. It doesn't guarantee that a law patterned on New York would survive a court challenge, but it certainly increases the prospects that it would.
So, let's go. Illinois could live with a concealed-carry law that recognizes local needs and interests. Gov. Pat Quinn and other Democratic leaders have signaled support for that option. The gun lobby doesn't like the New York template, but it would be interesting to watch pro-gun politicians defend a vote to defeat a bill that for the first time establishes concealed carry in Illinois.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/17/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
but it would be interesting to watch pro-gun politicians defend a vote to defeat a bill that for the first time establishes concealed carry in Illinois
I wonder if the Tribune ever considered the argument that a lousy concealed carry bill may be worse than no concealed carry bill.
#2
If you're going to pass a law only giving a small fraction of the populace the right to use effective self-defense away from their homes, why not go all the way and leave things where noone can?
#3
Illinois politicians will back up and give the absolute minimum ground. They do not want an armed public, and they will obstruct at every opportunity that they can get away with.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/17/2013 15:13 Comments ||
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[Dawn] THE campaigning in the run-up to Saturday and the voting on election day were generally orderly but allegations of rigging were aplenty as the results poured in.
To an extent, the complaints may be due to the misplaced confidence of the defeated party but the clamour is loud enough to call for an impartial inquiry. The admirers of retired Justice Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim -- this writer being one of them -- must feel quite hurt that such widespread charges should have arisen with a man of his reputation as the chief election commissioner.
He and his colleagues on the commission -- all retired judges -- were chosen by the president on the recommendation of the prime minister and the leader of the opposition, and approved by a parliamentary committee in which the treasury and opposition were both represented. There could hardly have been any other safeguard to ensure the non-partisan character of the commission.
Yet rigging could have taken place, and has perhaps, and the five ageing, retired judges could do little to prevent the tampering with the ballot at thousands of polling stations across the country. They could not have done much. The confidence reposed by the politicians and the people in the commission to organise fair and transparent polls was wholly misplaced.
The undeniable reality is that polls are conducted and supervised by a hierarchy of executive officials ranging from teachers and constables to the chief secretary and the inspector general of the police. In no way do these officials feel answerable to the Election Commission of Pakistain (ECP) which has seldom detected or punished an official for defying its rules. It has not the means to do it.
Reshuffling the officials at the top or even in the middle tier on the eve of elections hardly makes any difference to the polls being fair, because the integrity or political neutrality of officials is hardly a criterion in the reshuffle.
It is just replacing one with another. Woefully, the standards both of personal ethics and commitment to a code of conduct among the officials have been steadily declining because the principle of merit has been progressively abandoned in their recruitment, placement and promotion.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/17/2013 00:00 ||
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Netanyahu sends message through the 'New York Times' that the critical point for Israel would be reached if Assad were to interfere with action to prevent the transfer of game-changing or chemical weapons to Hezbollah.
You have to hand it to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: The man knows how to creatively draw red lines.
In September, when he wanted to draw a red line on the Iranian nuclear program -- when he wanted to tell both the Iranians and the world where Iran must stop before facing military action -- he went to the United Nations with a thick red marking pen, a Looney Tune picture of a bomb with a fuse, and drew a clear red line toward the top of the bomb. With that visual aid, he also explained that the red line was the Iranian accumulation of some 250 kg. of uranium enriched to 20 percent.
Netanyahu was mocked in the press -- both in the Israeli and the international media -- and was the butt of jokes on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. But, as The Washington Post pointed out last month, the Iranians are not laughing, and have stopped short of crossing that red line.
Fast-forward eight months, and Netanyahu is again drawing red lines.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Dawn] THE campaigning in the run-up to Saturday and the voting on election day were generally orderly but allegations of rigging were aplenty as the results poured in.
