Chicago Mayor Daley offers to shoot reporter to prove gun ban works

At a news conference to discuss Chicago’s gun ban and the Supreme Court’s pending ruling on the issue, a reporter from the Chicago Reader asked him if the ban was effective.

“Since guns are readily available in Chicago even with a ban in place, do you really think it’s been effective?” asked Mick Dumke.

“Oh!” Daley said. “It’s been very effective!”

He grabbed a rifle, held it up, and looked right at me. He was chuckling but there was no smile.

“If I put this up your—ha!—your butt—ha ha!—you’ll find out how effective this is!”

“If I put a round up your—ha ha!”

Besides being basically a retarded thing to do, I don’t even understand what the idiot’s point was. How would shooting the reporter prove anything?

Iowa is about to become Shall Issue.

Of course, this brings predictions of blood running in the streets and the OK Corral.

Here’s a bit about how the current “may issue” law works in one Iowa county, presented as proof that it’s just fine:

In Henry County, Sheriff Allen Wittmer has created a criteria on who is able to get a concealed weapons permit and who’s not qualified.

Under that criteria, those whose jobs require a firearm can be qualified to carry a weapon. The self employed also can get a permit if they collect and transport large sums of money or other valuables. Retired police officers also are qualified.

Wittmer, too, is in strong opposition to the law change.

“I did not support it,” Wittmer said. “There’s nobody that knows their constituents better than the sheriff. It’s totally taking the discretion away from the sheriff.”

Wittmer noted out of the 18 applications he received last year, nine were denied, just by merely following the county’s criteria.

“We have it working well here,” he noted. “We have a procedure in place that works in Henry County.”

So it sounds like the only people who get one in Henry County are people who require a gun for their jobs, people who transport large sums of money for their jobs, and people who are retired cops. So, unless your job necessitates it, only retired cops get permits.

That is a great example of a working may issue system. And a great example of why shall issue is the way to go.

In the hotel here and just saw a news story about an incident in Boston where a couple of dogs attacked another resident’s poodle. Neighbors claim that the dogs, belonging to someone in the neighborhood, have been terrorizing folks for some time. The poodle’s owner had to pull the dogs off of the little dog and he was injured doing so. When police showed up, both dogs attacked them. So the cops ended up shooting and killing the dogs. Duh.

In the Fox 25 TV news report, the on-the-scene reporter made it clear (rightly, I believe, from what I know of the story) that he thought the cops were completely justified. But there is apparently a bit of a question about why they fired 11 shots. The reporter made the statement “I’m not sure why they even had that many bullets” which is crazy. Does he think that they run around with one round like Deputy Fife?

This sounds a lot like the thinking that seems to come up when gun owners carry a second magazine or speed loaders for their revolver: “If the gun is just for personal defense why would you have so many bullets?”

Says Uncle:

In Chicago, if Pfleger or Daley assemble two people touting gun control, the Chicago Tribune makes a mess in its pants from all the glee. But thousands of pro-gun folks descend on the capital and it gets nary a mention

From this week’s NSSF newsletter:

Huffington Post readers in search of a better understanding of gun ownership trends in America and the firearms industry can do better than to rely on a blog written by Josh Sugarmann of the extremist anti-gun Violence Policy Center.

Heck yeah, they can do better. The question is, could they do WORSE?

The Shoulder Thing That Goes Up blog.

WA AWB is likely DOA

The bill was named in honor of 18-year-old Aaron Sullivan, who was shot and killed by a SKS 7.62-caliber rifle in Seattle in July. The legislation focuses on “military-style” assault weapons, which can fire rapidly and carry large magazines of ammunition.

The SKS? Large magazines of ammunition?

And I won’t even mention “7.62-caliber,” which would be the main armament of a World War 2 heavy cruiser.

Got a tip on a new site called Handgun Hourly and it looks pretty decent at first glance. I’ll have to look closer once I get through the SHOT Show, but in the meantime go check it out.

Interesting.

Via Sebastian: TV cameras miss how guns save lives

Of course, corpses are newsworthy in our sensational culture, but when an armed citizen stops an attack, the heroism rates barely a blip on the national radar screen.

Well, for one thing, if people realized how often guns were used defensively, a lot of the anti-gun message would go down the toilet.