nytimes | Not a single gun shop can be found in this
city because they are outlawed. Handguns were banned in Chicago for
decades, too, until 2010, when the United States Supreme Court ruled
that was going too far, leading city leaders to settle for restrictions
some describe as the closest they could get legally to a ban without a
ban. Despite a continuing legal fight, Illinois remains the only state
in the nation with no provision to let private citizens carry guns in
public.
To gun rights advocates, the city provides stark evidence that even some
of the toughest restrictions fail to make places safer. “The gun laws
in Chicago only restrict the law-abiding citizens and they’ve
essentially made the citizens prey,” said Richard A. Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association.
To gun control proponents, the struggles here underscore the opposite —
a need for strict, uniform national gun laws to eliminate the current
patchwork of state and local rules that allow guns to flow into this
city from outside.
“Chicago is like a house with two parents that may try to have good
rules and do what they can, but it’s like you’ve got this single house
sitting on a whole block where there’s anarchy,” said the Rev. Ira J.
Acree, one among a group of pastors here who have marched and gathered
signatures for an end to so much shooting. “Chicago is an argument for
laws that are statewide or, better yet, national.”
Chicago’s experience reveals the complications inherent in carrying out
local gun laws around the nation. Less restrictive laws in neighboring
communities and states not only make guns easy to obtain nearby, but
layers of differing laws — local and state — make it difficult to police
violations. And though many describe the local and state gun laws here
as relatively stringent, penalties for violating them — from jail time
to fines — have not proven as severe as they are in some other places,
reducing the incentive to comply.
Lately, the police say they are discovering far more guns on the streets
of Chicago than in the nation’s two more populous cities, Los Angeles
and New York. They seized 7,400 guns here in crimes or unpermitted uses
last year (compared with 3,285 in New York City), and have confiscated
574 guns just since Jan. 1 — 124 of them last week alone.
