DALEY NEWS
The mayor had a single event today. The event Anna alerted to you yesterday actually took place today, but the techonologically-challenged staff in the Daley press office have yet to master both telephones and calendars, so we were a day early with that news. The phone message announcing his schedule was still unintelligible, but suffice to say the big guy was up bright and early for some kind of award show at 7:55 this morning. He took no questions.
DALEY CHATTER
Forget the Taste, Lollapalooza or Pitchfork. Chicago’s greatest yearly event is happening this weekend and the mayor wants you to know about it. It’s the great Chicago annual gun buy-back!
That’s right, if you have some extra, rarely-used firearms laying around the house, why not turn that into some extra spending money.
"Now think of that. Here's the mayor of the city of Chicago asking people to turn in assault weapons," Mayor Daley said. "We're not in Iraq. We're not in Afghanistan. We're in America. We're asking 'em to turn in assault weapons. What do we need an assault weapon in America for?"
I dunno, Mr. Mayor, but Fox News commentator and cult leader Glenn Beck seems to have a long list of reasons. In fact, you could say Glenn Beck is the reason why I feel the need to be well-armed at all times.
And what if you don’t have guns of your own to turn in? Take someone else’s.
The mayor asked parents who think their children have guns to "look under their beds, in their closets," and then to turn in the weapons this weekend.
Fundraising for the event this year has taken a hit with the downturn in the economy, so handguns are only bringing in $50. Unwanted assault rifles will still fetch a handsome $100 though.
With prices like those, you’d be crazy not to trade in your firearms. And while you’re at it, why don’t you stuff all your gold in an envelope and mail it to me. I’ll give ya twenty bucks for it.
That's all, folks. Have a great weekend!
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Also, I prefer the term firearm over weapon. None of us refer to our kitchen knives or baseball bats as weapons unless they have been used as such. However, Ted Kennedy's car is a weapon, I suppose.
"Weapon" is one of those loaded (excuse the pun) words that immediately colors the debate. It's almost always associated with war or crime and very rarely used to describe any instrument that has been legally used for self-defense. My wife's grandmother was murdered in Philadelphia by a recent parolee weilding a knife. Now there's a weapon. Yes, in the back of my mind I know my AR15 could be used to defend myself and my family against a criminal, a group of terrorists, an angry mob of environmentalists who don't like my SUV - or even an over-reaching, tyrannical government. But the main reason I purchased it was for plinking and shooting competitions. So, in my mind, it is not foremost a weapon.
Meh, I call mine weapons because I consider them weapons. If you'd rather call it a firearm, that's OK with me, but it's the difference between a "weapon" and an "arm." There's not a lot of difference in my mind.
Your point about a "gun buy back" is well-taken, though. So well-taken that they changed the name of the Chicago event to a "gun turn in." I really believe they did that partly to deflect the criticism that they were claiming to buy back what they had never owned, and partly to normalize the idea of "turning in your guns."
First of all the government didn't sell us our firearms so the term buy-back is a misnomer. It's nice that the gun theives now have a willing fence for their merchandise in the city government. It's also nice to have a place to sell a junk gun that you couldn't sell anywhere else and get $50 or $100 from the taxpayers. I wonder how many people who legitimately acquired their semi-auto rifles for $600 or more will willingly turn them in for $100? The economy is bad but not that bad. By the way, the folks in the middle of the South Central LA riots a few years back found that semi-auto, high-capacity rifles are pretty good for home/business defense.
You're not being nice to Da Mayor, you know. Are you ashamed?
Seriously, though, the answer to his question is that the guns he's talking about aren't assault weapons. There's no such thing as an assault weapon, although there is such a thing as an "assault rifle." Those are flatly illegal in Illinois (they're fully automatic) and extremely regulated in the rest of the nation, and there's no way anyone's turning one in to a Chicago buy back for $100.
His question is the equivalent of saying, "Waving that American flag is Communism. Why do you support Communism?"
The only correct response is, "I don't. You just made that up. You are a nutbar with extra nuts."
Ashamed? Of making fun of the mayor? You must be new to the Daily Daley, Don. Welcome.
Why distinguish one weapon from another?
Qstrian: Because gangbangers don't defend street corners with .22-caliber squirrel rifles. And because as deadly as a handgun can be, a skilled hand with an illegal M4 carbine firing a 5.56mm NATO round in burst mode is exponentially more deadly. Even the AR-15, the legal, civilian counterpart to the M4, which as Don point out doesn't fire in automatic mode, still has a range, packs a punch, and has a clip capacity far greater than your average handgun.
Does that matter to the person killed or wounded by a stray bullet? No, not really. But in this country we have gun control, not gun reduction or gun elimination. And if all you're going to do is try to control guns, then you're stuck playing a probability game. The most deadly weapons get slapped with a politically created nomenclature, as Don pointed out, and they try their damnedest to control those weapons.
Turn in a silly idea, guns are back ordered sales are way up..
Why distinguish between weapons?
Well, you'd have to ask the Mayor that one. He made the distinction; I just pointed out that his distinction was . . . you know, sort of . . . fictional. The law in Chicago distinguishes between "assault weapons" and other long guns--you can legally register a shotgun or a rifle in Chicago, but not if it's on the list of guns the Chicago City Council decided to label "assault weapons." I agree that it's not a terribly useful distinction, but it's there.
The U.S. military, which coined the term "assault rifle," made the distinction because there's a difference in function for their purpose between "assault rifles" and other weapons such as "battle rifles." A battle rifle (like an M1 or an M14) fires a full-powered rifle round similar to the ones used by the first military rifles--a powerful round intended for fighting at long ranges. Think of trying to use a rifle across no-man's land in France in 1944. Most are bolt-action or semi-automatic. A few are fully automatic, like the M14.
An assault rifle is fully automatic and fires an "intermediate" cartridge, something much more powerful than a handgun round but less powerful than a standard rifle round. The compromise in power and range makes it possible to carry much more ammunition and use fully-automatic fire more efficiently because there's less recoil.
And again, it's a federal and state felony for a private citizen to own an assault rifle in Illinois. Period. Daley is lying.
To be fair to Daley, and I am rarely fair to the mayor, he didn't ask people to trade in legal weapons. He asked them to trade in any weapons. So there is the unlikely possibility that someone will turn up with a fully automatic Kalashnikov in exchange for their $100 voucher.
And though I agree with you that the term "assault weapon" is a political creation intended to make these weapons seem more fearsome, but I'd also propose that calling them "semiautomatic rifles" demonstrates an equal political cunning, making them seem like quaint tools used for hunting big game. And, as we both know, an AR-15 is a pointless weapon for hunting. It simply lacks the power to take down a large animal. So maybe we need a whole new terminology for this type of weapon.
Well, I don't know what "semiautomatic rifle" has to do with "quaint hunting rifle," Adam. I don't know that anyone considers an M1 Garand a quaint hunting rifle, and it's the quintessential semi-automatic rifle (though not considered an assault weapon in Chicago) and there are three things to keep in mind as we think about that argument:
1. Hunting is not the only (or even the most) legitimate use for a firearm. A rifle like an AR15 or an AK47 variant has plenty of uses outside hunting, from athletic competition to home defense to a light, tough, dependable "truck gun." Some guns are used for hunting, but those guns are not more or less legitimate than guns that are used at the range, carried for defense, or hung on a wall and never fired.
2. You may not think of an AR15 as a "hunting rifle" but they're actually widely used by hunters. They're nearly perfect rifles for varmint and predator hunters. The AR15 in .223 is a little light for, say, whitetail deer, but it's an excellent coyote gun. And one of the advantages of the AR15 design is that it's modular. If you want to carry one for deer (in other states--centerfire rifles can't be used for deer in Illinois) you simply remove the "upper" of the gun and replace it with an upper in a different caliber. .243 Winchester is very popular, and it's excellent deer medicine.
The holding company that owns Remington recently acquired Bushmaster, a major AR15 manufacturer, and the next thing you know, Remington is selling camouflaged AR15 rifles to hunters--and they also offer an AR10 variant, the same basic rifle but scaled up to take the .308 round. That's one of the most common deer-hunting calibers across North America.
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