CHICAGO (AP) -- With the city's gun ban certain to be overturned, Mayor Richard Daley on Thursday introduced what city officials say is the strictest handgun ordinance in the United States.
The measure, which draws from ordinances around the country, would ban gun shops in Chicago and prohibit gun owners from stepping outside their homes, even onto their porches or garages, with a handgun.
Daley announced his ordinance at a park on the city's South Side three days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Americans have a right to own a gun for self-defense anywhere they live. The City Council is expected to vote on it Friday.
''As long as I'm mayor, we will never give up or give in to gun violence that continues to threaten every part of our nation, including Chicago,'' said Daley, who was flanked by activists, city officials and the parents of a teenager whose son was shot and killed on a city bus while shielding a friend.
The ordinance, which Daley urged the City Council to pass, also would :
-- Limit the number of handguns residents can register to one per month and prohibit residents from having more than one handgun in operating order at any given time.
-- Require residents in homes with children to keep them in lock boxes or equipped with trigger locks.
-- Require prospective gun owners to take a four-hour class and one-hour training at a gun range. They would have to leave the city for training because Chicago prohibits new gun ranges and limits the use of existing ranges to police officers. Those restrictions were similar to those in an ordinance passed in Washington, D.C., after the high court struck down its ban two years ago.
-- Prohibit people from owning a gun if they were convicted of a violent crime, domestic violence or two or more convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Residents convicted of a gun offense would have to register with the police department.
-- Calls for the police department to maintain a registry of every handgun owner in the city, with the names and addresses to be made available to police officers, firefighters and other emergency responders.
Those who already have handguns in the city -- which has been illegal since the city's ban was approved 28 years ago -- would have 90 days to register those weapons, according to the proposed ordinance.
Residents convicted of violating the city's ordinance can face a fine up to $5,000 and be locked up for as long as 90 days for a first offense and a fine of up to $10,000 and as long as six months behind bars for subsequent convictions.
The mayor's proposal is celebrated by at least one Catholic--I got the above link from the post by a contributor to Mirror of Justice, Michael Perry: God bless Chicago's (Catholic) Mayor Daley -- and to Hell with the NRA. (I don't know why he's still allowed to contribute to the blog, when he puts up stuff like this: "A Dictatorship of Relativism?"
Leslie Green, Professor of Philosophy of Law, Balliol College, Oxford University, takes on Benedict XVI, here.
Is the Holy Father, like many, prone to using abstractions and genealogy in his analysis of sin? Might his analysis be incorrect as a result? Sure. But do we need a liberal like Leslie Green to tell us that the Holy Father is incorrect?
Sadly, to my way of thinking, since there’s so much that’s rich and important in Catholic moral theology, the Church has transformed itself into a kind of fertility cult, so that what it really cares about now is making sure that you know men aren’t having sex with men and nobody’s having abortions and there are no condoms in the JCR around the corner here and that there aren’t any divorces. Well even in a fairly liberal, tolerant sexual morality, there’s nobody that argues that anything goes. The people that Pope Benedict deplores don’t think that rape is okay, and they certainly don’t think that the sexual abuse of children is okay. Everybody agrees there is a bottom line minimum to which we all must conform. And the thing is of course that some folks disagree about where the minimums should be drawn. That’s democracy."More social justice talk! Less sex talk!"
There wouldn't be so much teaching concerning sexual morality if people were doing what was right.
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