McHenry County Blog

It’s OK for Chicago Alderman to carry concealed handguns, but not its citizens.

It’s OK for suburban Cook County residents to carry concealed guns, but not Chicagoans.

That’s what I conclude after listening to part of a WBEZ interview with State Senator Kwame Raoul, the sponsor of the Illinois State Senate’s concealed carry legislation.

First he wanted the Cook County Sheriff to approve all concealed carry permits outside of Chicago. Chicago residents would have to pass the muster of Chicago’s top cop.

Then Chicago resident Raoul apparently figured out that some municipalities like Elgin, Barrington, Buffalo Grove are in both Cook and surrounding counties.

People on one side of those cities would have the right to protect themselves on the street, but not others.

Oh, the confusion.

So Raoul backed off from denying most suburban Cook County residents from their Second Amendment rights, as defined by the Federal Appellate Court sitting in Chicago, and decided to focus on his hometown, the place where people need to be able to protect themselves more than anywhere else in Illinois.

He would only require his constituents and other Chicago residents to prove they had a need to carry a weapon.

And, his bill would allow Home Rule municipalities in suburban Cook County the power to require approval from a local law enforcement official. (I didn’t listen long enough to know whether that would be the local police chief or the Cook County Sheriff.)

Basic economics teaches that when one prices something high that few will be sold.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart has proposed that Cook County residents be charged $300 to apply for a concealed carry license. That’s what the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

That will keep poor blacks and Latinos, not to mention white people from being able to legally protect themselves.

John Lott made that point in is “More Guns, Less Crime” (review here of most recent 2010 edition).

It is so intuitive that I wonder if any of the liberal commentators will pick up on what appears to be racial discrimination.

The article tells of Dart speaking “to elderly people in the south suburbs. They complained that the police were unresponsive. Some said they were regularly burglarized while they attended church.”

Does he think elderly people have $300 to spare in order to exercise a Constitutional Right?

The Federal Appellate Court decision granting concealed carry rights to Illinois residents does not say that poor people have less of a right than middle class and rich people to carry guns to protect themselves.

As the decision says,

“The Supreme Court has decided that the [Second A]mendment confers a right to bear arms for self-defense, which is as important outside the home as inside.”

Dart said the $300 fee would pay for administrative fees.”

Read the decision if you are really interested.

This decision comes with the backdrop of Chicago Police being incapable to stop people from getting shot on the street.

Here are some snippets:

“Even carrying an unloaded gun in public, if it’s uncased and immediately accessible, is prohibited, other than to police and other excepted persons, unless carried openly outside a vehicle in an unincorporated area and ammunition for the gun is not immediately accessible. 720 ILCS 5/24-1(a)(4)(iii), (10)(iii), -1.6(a)(3)(B).” (Page 2)

“But the Supreme Court has not yet addressed the question whether the Second Amendment creates a right of self-defense outside the home.” (Page 2)

“Nor can we ignore the implication of the analysis that the constitutional right of armed selfdefense is broader than the right to have a gun in one’s home.” (Page 4)

“Heller explored the right’s origins, noting that the 1689 English Bill of Rights explicitly protected a right to keep arms for self-defense, 554 U.S. at 593, and that by 1765, Blackstone was able to assert that the right to keep and bear arms was ‘one of the fundamental rights of Englishmen,’ id. at 594.” 130 S. Ct. at 3037. And immediately the Court adds that ‘Blackstone’s assessment was shared by the American colonists.’” (Page 4)

“The Second Amendment states in its entirety that ‘a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed’ (emphasis added). The right to ‘bear’ as distinct from the right to ‘keep’ arms is unlikely to refer to the home.” (Page 5)

“And one doesn’t have to be a historian to realize that a right to keep and bear arms for personal self-defense in the eighteenth century could not rationally have been limited to the home.” (Page 5)

“Twenty-first century Illinois has no hostile Indians. But a Chicagoan is a good deal more likely to be attacked on a sidewalk in a rough neighborhood than in his apartment on the 35th floor of the Park Tower. A woman who is being stalked or has obtained a protective order against a violent ex-husband is more vulnerable to being attacked while walking to or from her home than when inside. She has a stronger self-defense claim to be allowed to carry a gun in public than the resident of a fancy apartment building (complete with doorman) has a claim to sleep with a loaded gun under her mattress. But Illinois wants to deny the former claim, while compelled by McDonald to honor the latter. That creates an arbitrary difference.” (Page 8)

“A gun is a potential danger to more people if carried in public than just kept in the home. But the other side of this coin is that knowing that many law-abiding citizens are walking the streets armed may make criminals timid. Given that in Chicago, at least, most murders occur outside the home, Chicago Police Dep’t, Crime at a Glance: District 1 13 (Jan.–June 2010), the net effect on crime rates in general and murder rates in particular of allowing the carriage of guns in public is uncertain both as a matter of theory and empirically.” (Page 8)

“Concealed carriage of guns might increase the death rate from assaults rather than increase the number of assaults. But the studies don’t find that laws that allow concealed carriage increase the death rate from shootings, and this in turn casts doubt on the finding of an increased crime rate when concealed carriage is allowed; for if there were more confrontations with an armed criminal, one would expect more shootings. Moreover, there is no reason to expect Illinois to impose minimal permit restrictions on carriage of guns outside the home, for obviously this is not a state that has a strong pro-gun culture, unlike the states that began allowing concealed carriage before Heller and MacDonald enlarged the scope of Second Amendment rights.” (Page 12)

“Charles C. Branas et al., “Investigating the Link Between Gun Possession and Gun Assault,” 99 Am. J. of Pub. Health 2034, 2037 (2009), finds that assault victims are more likely to be armed than the rest Nos. 12-1269, 12-1788 13 of the population is, which might be thought evidence that going armed is not effective self-defense. But that finding does not illuminate the deterrent effect of knowing that potential victims may be armed.” (Pages 12 + 13)

“David Hemenway & Deborah Azrael, “The Relative Frequency of Offensive and Defensive Gun Uses: Results from a National Survey,” 15 Violence & Victims 257, 271 (2000), finds that a person carrying a gun is more likely to use it to commit a crime than to defend himself from criminals. But that is like saying that soldiers are more likely to be armed than civilians.” (Page 13)

“In sum, the empirical literature on the effects of allowing the carriage of guns in public fails to establish a pragmatic defense of the Illinois law…Anyway the Supreme Court made clear in Heller that it wasn’t going to make the right to bear arms depend on casualty counts.” (Page 13)

“Illinois has not made that strong showing—and it would have to make a stronger showing in this case than the government did in Skoien, because the curtailment of gun rights was much narrower: there the gun rights of persons convicted of domestic violence, here the gun rights of the entire lawabiding adult population of Illinois.” (Page 14)

“A blanket prohibition on carrying gun in public prevents a person from defending himself anywhere except inside his home; and so substantial a curtailment of the right of armed self-defense requires a greater showing of justification than merely that the public might benefit on balance from such a curtailment, though there is no proof it would.” (Page 14)

“Illinois has lots of options for protecting its people from being shot without having to eliminate all possibility of armed self-defense in public.” (page 15)

“Remarkably, Illinois is the only state that maintains a flat ban on carrying ready-to-use guns outside the home, though many states used to ban carrying concealed guns outside the home…Not even Massachusetts has so flat a ban as Illinois, though the District of Columbia does…” (Page 15)

“It is not that all states but Illinois are indifferent to the dangers that widespread public carrying of guns 16 Nos. 12-1269, 12-1788 may pose. Some may be. But others have decided that a proper balance between the interest in self-defense and the dangers created by carrying guns in public is to limit the right to carry a gun to responsible persons rather than to ban public carriage altogether, as Illinois with its meager exceptions comes close to doing. Even jurisdictions like New York State, where officials have broad discretion to deny applications for gun permits, recognize that the interest in self-defense extends outside the home. There is no suggestion that some unique characteristic of criminal activity in Illinois justifies the state’s taking a different approach from the other 49 states. If the Illinois approach were demonstrably superior, one would expect at least one or two other states to have emulated it.” (Pages 15 + 16)

“If enough private institutions decided to do that [ban guns from their premises], the right to carry a gun in public would have much less value and might rarely be exercised—in which event the invalidation of the Illinois law might have little effect, which opponents of gun rights would welcome.” (Page 17)

“Recently the Second Circuit upheld a New York state law that requires an applicant for a permit to carry a concealed handgun in public to demonstrate “proper cause” to obtain a license.” (Page 17)

“…though we need not speculate on the limits that Illinois may in the interest of public safety constitutionally impose on the carrying of guns in public; it is enough that the limits it has imposed go too far.” (Page 19)

“…only legislative facts are relevant to the constitutionality of the Illinois gun law. The key legislative facts in this case are the effects of the Illinois law; the state has failed to show that those effects are positive.” (Page 20)

“The theoretical and empirical evidence (which overall is inconclusive) is consistent with concluding that a right to carry firearms in public may promote self-defense. Illinois had to provide us with more than merely a rational basis for believing that its uniquely sweeping ban is justified by an increase in public safety. It has failed to meet this burden. The Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment therefore compels us to reverse the decisions in the two cases before us and remand them to their respective district courts for the entry of declarations of unconstitutionality and permanent injunctions.

“Nevertheless we order our mandate stayed for 180 days [June 9, 22013] to allow the Illinois legislature to craft a new gun law that will impose reasonable limitations, consistent with the public safety and the Second Amendment as interpreted in this opinion, on the carrying of guns in public.” (Pages 20 + 21)

Justice Williams filed at 25-page dissent.

That was the takeaway message for me from the Huntley Tea Party’s forum on gun control.

Bill Jenkins, whose 16-year old son was killed in Richmond, Virginia, put declining gun ownership statistics on the screen arguing that John Lott’s “More Guns, Less Crime” analysis was false, that Concealed Carry legislation was not the cause of less crime, rather the end of a 1990′s crime spree was.  I’ll tell you.  I’d drive to Chicago to hear them debate.

Jenkins also showed a slide showing crime increasing in Concealed Carry states at the same time it was increasing in states without that privilege.

“You cannot use the ‘decreases crime’ argument to support Concealed Carry legislation,” he said.

Illinois State Rifle Association President Richard Pearson took on another of Jenkins’ statistics, that of the small  percentage of gun owners who use their guys to deter crime.

He offered two examples from his own life.

He told of a guy walking into his jewelry store, locking the door behind him and asking, “What would you do if I tried to rob your store?”

“I’d shoot you with my 45,” Pearson replied  as he pulled his gun from the holster behind his back.  The man immediately unlocked the door and left.

He told the audience at the Huntley Park District Building Auditorium that he did not report the incident, that the Police Department was across the street and couldn’t have done anything to help him.

A second incident occurred when a car with men pulled next to them in a threatening way.  The drive of the pickup in which Pearson was a passenger pulled onto a dirt road, made some dust fly, stopped the pickup and when the car following the two came into view its occupants faced a shotgun.

Needless to say, they drove away.

Pearson didn’t report that to the police either.

The point he was trying to make was that one statistic upon which Jenkins was relying might not be as important as Jenkins thought.

There were fascinating comments by Todd Vandermyde about how the military had found a 50-caliber rifle developed for hunting and turned it into a sniper’s rifle used by the military after Jenkins said he favored restricting the ownership of military grade guns.

Clearly, Vandermyde knew that part of the issue better than Jenkins.

That was the issue part of the evening.

Tomorrow, McHenry County Blog will report on the electoral side.

The event was chaired by former Huntley School Board member Jim Carlin.

Coordinator of the Huntley Tea Party is Linda Bakwell.

What you see is the side of the agenda for the McHenry County Concealed Carry rally held Thursday night at the Operating Engineers Lakemoor Banquet Hall.

I see four candidates for Congress were present or representated.

From the 16th District, incumbent Republican Don Manzullo had a statement read by McHenry Right to Carry Association President Lou Rofrano.  Challenging Democrat George Galrapp spoke for himself.

In the 8th District, incumbent Democrat Melissa Bean was a no-show.  Republican Joe Walsh came in person and Green Party candidate Bill Scheurer had a statement read.

Democratic Party candidate for McHenry County Sheriff Mike Mahon spoke early on.  Green Party candidate for Sheriff Gus Philpott was slotted in the middle.

Incumbent Republican Sheriff Keith Nygren is not listed on the agenda.  Lake County Sheriff Mark Curran had a statement read on his behalf, as did his Demcoratic Party opponent Doug Roberts.

For state representative, the southern McHenry County district now represented by Republican Mike Tryon saw him speaking for himself.  Challenging Democrat Robert Kaempfe sent a statement to read.

Incumbent Democrat Jack Franks was apparently a no-show, but his Republican opponent John O’Neill spoke.

Lake County’s State Senator Michael Bond is listed on the agenda.  His opponent, Suzi Schmidt, had a statement read.

The only statewide candidate on the agenda was Republican gubernatorial aspirant Bill Brady.  A statement was read on his behalf.

Nick Provenzano, seeking to return to the McHenry County Board, also spoke to the crowd.

= = = = =

If you would like some facts about the effectiveness of the proposal after which the association is named, I would suggest reading the third edition of “More Guns, Less Crime” by John Lott.

For my review of the book, click here.

Nine more years of data in this third edition of “More Guns, Less Crime.”

When I read the second edition eight years ago, I was pleased that John Lott’s hypothesis of the mid-1990′s had up held.

After all, it’s just common sense that if a potential rapist thought a woman might be able to protect herself with a gun that he would be less likely to attack, being the cowards rapists are.

But the leap from common sense to policy formation sometimes takes facts.

Fortunately, this book is packed with them.

Besides showing that no state that has adopted right-to-carry legislation has seen any of the parade of horribles that opponents trot out occur, the data presented show that crime actually does decrease when people are allowed to carry firearms.

In my own state of Illinois, there was a member of the Armed Forces killed while sitting in the front row of the Northern Illinois University lecture hall when the shooter entered the stage from an outside door and started firing. Lott points out that campus security arrived in six minutes—faster than in any other mass shooting at an institution of higher learning—but that was still not good enough.

Maybe, had NIU not been a protection free zone, she and others would be alive today.

Perhaps the mayor of Washington, D.C., Adrian M. Fenty, whom I understand is a fellow graduate of Oberlin College, will read the book and figure out that he could lower his city’s crime rate by advocating something no good little Oberlin liberal would ever think would work…unless he or she actually was willing to follow data to their logical policy conclusions.

Not that I think my former legislative colleague Richard Daley, now mayor of Chicago, could make that leap, but, maybe, just maybe, the mayor of Washington can.

The rest of us who read this book will be armed with information to promote a logical “we can protect ourselves when the police aren’t around, if policy makers will let us” policy.

Incidentally, lower hurdles to get a license (in training and dollars) tend to result in larger drops in crime rate.

= = = = =
The above was published as a book review on Amazon.com.

Related

Crime Fighting – Mayor Daily Just Doesn’t Get It

Shift on Gun Control Thoughts by Leading Liberal Journalist

Received the third edition of John Lott’s “More Guns, Less Crime” yesterday.

Eight years ago I read the second edition down in Florida before starting my Libertarian Party campaign for Illinois Governor.

The book was a real eye-opener then.

The new edition provides nine more years of data and critical analyses of his detractors.

Lott was teaching at the University of Chicago when he wrote the first edition. He’s not now. A lot of us think Mayor Daley had more than a little to do with that.

Even so, Lott’s book is published by the University of Chicago press.

What delicious irony.

Lott doesn’t make any mention of the specifics, but I found the following instructive of the personal sacrifice Lott has made to follow the facts he found to the policy conclusions he supports.

At the beginning of Chapter 10, entitled, “A Decade Later: Nine More Years of Data and Nine More States,” he talks of the argument and the data having been “hotly debated” and characterizes it as “unpleasant, vociferous, and even disingenuous.”

“To say that my career has suffered as a result is something of an understatement and, alas, an unpleasant warning to other scholars who dare to go against the academic grain. And, yet as this chapter will document, within the scholarly community the research has withstood criticism and remains sound.”

Later, on page 305, he adds,

“Being a target of inaccurate accusations has been an unfortunate and unpleasant experience. It certainly would have been preferable if the debate had stuck to the data and their analysis. The hypothesis that more guns connects to less crime has stood up against massive efforts to criticize it.”

“To be blunt, the debate, such as it is, has unfortunately become personalized rather than sticking to the merits of the case—on which my opponents have no case to make.” (Page 295)

Put a bit differently, on the same page he writes:

“Not a single referred academic study by economists or criminologists has found a bad effect from these laws…the basic results have replicated, which is a central scientific criterion for evaluating an argument.”

So what doesn’t Daley understand?

“Every place around the world that has banned guns appear to have experienced an increase in murder and violent crime rates,” Lott writes.

He writes this right before he talks about Chicago on page 315.

Lott recounts Chicago’s enactment of its gun ban in 1983.

“Chicago’s murder rate fell from 39 to 22 per 100,000 in the eight years before the law and then rose slightly to 23.

“During the seventeen years from 1983 through 1999, there has been only one year when Chicago’s murder rate fell below what it was in 1982, the last year before the ban.

Comparing Chicago's murder rate with the nine other largest US cities. Click to enlarge.

“Over the same time, the U.S. murder rate fell by 31 percent, from 8.3 to 5.7, and the murder rate for the other nine largest cities dropped by 34 percent from 17.8 to 11.7 (figure 10.14). Chicago’s murder rate doesn’t fall below its 1982 murder rate until 2002.

“It is hard to attribute the eventual drop to the ban, which went into effect twenty years earlier.”

What are the benefits of right-to-carry laws?

“There are large drops in overall violent crime, murder, rape, and aggravated assault that begin right after the right-to-carry laws have gone into effect. In all those crime categories, the crime rates consistently stay much lower than they were before the law,” Lott writes on page 259.

And, the murder rate?

“When the laws were passed,” he explains, “the average murder rate in non-right-to-carry states was 6.3 per 100,000 people. By the first and second full years of the law it had fallen to 5.9. And by nine to ten years after the law, it had declined to 5.2. That averages to about a 1.7 percent drop in murder rates per year for ten years.”

Rape rates went down significantly.

His appendix 6 shows these findings and others in detail.

So, what has Daley to lose by following the logic of this data?

Just admitting his gun control ideology is based on faith, not facts.

The year before I ran for Governor, Michigan passed a right-to-carry law.

Six years into this experiment to allow citizens to defend themselves, the Detroit Free Press wrote,

“The incidence of violent crime in Michigan in the six years since the law went into effect has been, on average, below the rate of the previous six years. The overall incidence of death from firearms, including suicide and accidents, also has declined.”

Dire predictions by the Wayne county (Detroit) Sheriff on the what would happen if the law were enacted, which I read at the time, did not occur.  He admitted it a year later in a Traverse City newspaper article I read.

Southside Cleveland Democratic Party State Rep. Michale DeBose voted against Ohio right-to-carry bills two times. A bill passed in 2004.

On May 15, 2007 the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote this:

“’I was wrong,’ he said Friday.

“’I'm going to get a permit and so is my wife.

“’I've changed my mind. You need a way to protect yourself and your family.’”

If only Mayor Daley would take a chance that Chicago is no different from Cleveland.

Perhaps, if he reflected on the fact that no state that has enacted such a law has repealed it, that the only changes have been to make restrictions on those with permits looser, he might act in the best interests of his crime-weary constituents.

In the Illinois General Assembly, one Chicago state senator elected in 1992 told his table mates at the Legislative Research Unit’s new legislators’ conference that he always carried a gun.

I saw another Chicago legislator (different race) with his handgun in his shoulder holster on the House floor while he was reaching for his wallet.

And, of course, Chicago aldermen already have the right to carry concealed weapons.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Laura Washington was on the Chicago Week in Review panel Friday night.

Much of the discussion was about gun control measures defeated in Springfield. Of course, none of the panelists were on the John Lott “More Guns, Less Crime” page. (I would highly recommend the 2000 book. Buy the paperback version, however, it has some updates not in the hardback.)

“They don’t trust the police,” liberal Laura Washington said of blacks she knows. “They want their own protection.”

That’s precisely what I argued in a 2002 radio when I was running for governor against Rod Blagojevich and Jim Ryan on the Libertarian Party ticket.

That ad that drew lots of negative comments from the liberal talk show hosts in Chicago. You can read it below:

Radio Ad – 911 Personal Security Act

Sound of man trying to break down the door.

Ex-husband: Open that door, (bleep).

Woman: (Dials 911) Come on. Answer.

Operator: 911, What is your emergency?

Woman: My ex-husband’s trying to break in. Send help. I’m going upstairs. (Hangs up phone.)

(Sound of woman running upstairs.)

(Sound of door being forcibly opened.)

Woman: (Dials 911) Come on.

Operator: 911, What is your emergency?

Woman: He’s in the house. He’s coming upstairs. I’m locking the bedroom door. (Hangs up the phone.)

(Sound of dead bolt turning. Man running up stairs.)

Man: I’ll teach you!

Woman: (Dials 911) Answer the phone.

Operator: 911, What is your emergency?

Woman: Send help! He’s kicking in the bed room door.

(Sound of shot. Sound of woman falling to floor, pulling phone with her, slight ring)

Pause

Announcer: Sometimes the police can’t be where you need them when you need them. Cal Skinner, Libertarian candidate for Governor, thinks you should have the right to defend yourself, even in Chicago.

Elect Cal Skinner Governor. Skinner is the only candidate who knows that the police can’t always be where you need them when you need them.

Skinner: Vote Libertarian for a change. Vote Libertarian for a REAL CHANGE.

Announcer: Paid for by Skinner4Governor.org. Reece Reed, Treasurer

Host Joel Weisman, who, of course, is responsible for selecting his show’s guests, added this comment after one of the panelists said that all of the proposals made common sense:

”It’s not common sense to those who oppose it.”

Weisman is certainly correct. I wonder WTTW why won’t run a real debate on gun control with John Lott as one of the participants.

The ad, by the way, was inspired by an NRA TV ad that I saw at an ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) convention at Travis City, Michigan, in 1992. It was chilling, but the National Rifle Association could not find it, so we had to write it ourselves.

During 2002, something very close to this scenario occurred to a black Chicago woman. I’m sure most people thought that was where we got the idea.

= = = = =
I’ve always wondered if Barrington Hills’ Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Lichtman would still be alive if they had had a gun to protect themselves from Peter Hommerson, who just got life for murdering them. Lichtman and his wife Kay were shot. Then, Hommerson torched their home. The article you see was in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune. The picture of the burning house was on WBBM-TV.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Laura Washington was on the Chicago Week in Review panel Friday night.

Much of the discussion was about gun control measures defeated in Springfield. Of course, none of the panelists were on the John Lott “More Guns, Less Crime” page. (I would highly recommend the 2000 book. Buy the paperback version, however, it has some updates not in the hardback.)

“They don’t trust the police,” liberal Laura Washington said of blacks she knows. “They want their own protection.”

That’s precisely what I argued in a 2002 radio when I was running for governor against Rod Blagojevich and Jim Ryan on the Libertarian Party ticket.

That ad that drew lots of negative comments from the liberal talk show hosts in Chicago. You can read it below:

Radio Ad – 911 Personal Security Act

Sound of man trying to break down the door.

Ex-husband: Open that door, (bleep).

Woman: (Dials 911) Come on. Answer.

Operator: 911, What is your emergency?

Woman: My ex-husband’s trying to break in. Send help. I’m going upstairs. (Hangs up phone.)

(Sound of woman running upstairs.)

(Sound of door being forcibly opened.)

Woman: (Dials 911) Come on.

Operator: 911, What is your emergency?

Woman: He’s in the house. He’s coming upstairs. I’m locking the bedroom door. (Hangs up the phone.)

(Sound of dead bolt turning. Man running up stairs.)

Man: I’ll teach you!

Woman: (Dials 911) Answer the phone.

Operator: 911, What is your emergency?

Woman: Send help! He’s kicking in the bed room door.

(Sound of shot. Sound of woman falling to floor, pulling phone with her, slight ring)

Pause

Announcer: Sometimes the police can’t be where you need them when you need them. Cal Skinner, Libertarian candidate for Governor, thinks you should have the right to defend yourself, even in Chicago.

Elect Cal Skinner Governor. Skinner is the only candidate who knows that the police can’t always be where you need them when you need them.

Skinner: Vote Libertarian for a change. Vote Libertarian for a REAL CHANGE.

Announcer: Paid for by Skinner4Governor.org. Reece Reed, Treasurer

Host Joel Weisman, who, of course, is responsible for selecting his show’s guests, added this comment after one of the panelists said that all of the proposals made common sense:

”It’s not common sense to those who oppose it.”

Weisman is certainly correct. I wonder WTTW why won’t run a real debate on gun control with John Lott as one of the participants.

The ad, by the way, was inspired by an NRA TV ad that I saw at an ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) convention at Travis City, Michigan, in 1992. It was chilling, but the National Rifle Association could not find it, so we had to write it ourselves.

During 2002, something very close to this scenario occurred to a black Chicago woman. I’m sure most people thought that was where we got the idea.

= = = = =
I’ve always wondered if Barrington Hills’ Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Lichtman would still be alive if they had had a gun to protect themselves from Peter Hommerson, who just got life for murdering them. Lichtman and his wife Kay were shot. Then, Hommerson torched their home. The article you see was in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune. The picture of the burning house was on WBBM-TV.