A group of Chicagoans is suing nearby local governments, claiming Chicago residents have a “civil right” to force the city’s strict gun control laws on other locales.
The Associated Press reported last month:
The Rev. Michael Pfleger … announced the lawsuits against Lincolnwood, Lyons and Riverdale. The activist priest says many of the guns recovered from Chicago crime scenes came from stores in those communities.
Lawyers for the Coalition for Safe Chicago Communities filed the lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court claiming the suburbs’ gun store regulations violate the Illinois Civil Rights Act.
Pfleger contends violence is a civil rights issue, and by failing to monitor the gun sales adequately, the stores are violating families’ rights by preventing them from doing regular activities such as walking to school and playing in parks.
In other words, the activists are working on the supposition that Chicago’s strict gun control laws are ineffective because guns are available outside the city.
The Coalition for Safe Chicago Communities got that idea from a 2014 “study” from the City of Chicago titled “Tracing the Guns: The Impact of Illegal Guns on Violence in Chicago.”
The study’s earthshaking revelation: The majority of firearms used in Chicago crimes aren’t bought within the city limits.
Considering that gun sales are prohibited in Chicago, feel free to file that in the “no kidding” area of your brain.
The plaintiffs in the case are making a pretty bold argument — and an insulting one to Chicago residents — in claiming that gun sales outside the city violate the Illinois Civil Rights Act, which prohibits local governments from using “criteria or methods of administration” that have “the effect of subjecting individuals to discrimination because of that person’s race.”
Minority neighborhoods in Chicago are less desirable places to live because of respect for the 2nd Amendment in nearby areas which, the suit says, encourages minority residents of Chicago neighborhoods “to seek and obtain guns” for crimes. That causes “a disparate and terrible impact on African Americans who live in neighborhoods afflicted by such illegal gun use ….”
In other words, the plaintiffs are saying that blacks in Chicago can’t be trusted not to murder one another and create problems in their communities with firearms. The problem is so bad, they contend, that guns must be banned in all nearby areas a Chicago resident could reasonably travel to for a gun purchase.
Talk about a racist argument.
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