Press Releases : Legislative Update

Downstate lawmakers renew fight to carry concealed weapons

BY CHRIS ESSIG PANTAGRAPGH.COM

SPRINGFIELD — A proposal pushed by state Rep. John Bradley, D-Marion, was approved by the House Agriculture Committee on an 11-1 vote. Chicago-area lawmakers are likely to push back if it reaches the House floor.

Proponents hope a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Chicago’s handgun ban could breathe life into their push. The high court heard oral arguments Tuesday.

Two years ago, the court overturned a similar handgun ban in Washington, D.C.

Illinois and Wisconsin are the only states that bar residents from carrying concealed weapons after undergoing training. Under Bradley’s proposal, the state police would be responsible for issuing permits.

Gun-rights activists argue that it’s unfair that some residents, including retired police officers, are allowed to carry concealed guns but others aren’t.

“All of our citizens should have the same equal protection,” said Todd Vandermyde, lobbyist for the National Rifle Association.

Opponents disagree.

“We don’t see how allowing handguns in public places in any way decreases the risk of gun death in communities,” said Tom Mannard, executive director for the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence.

Some public places would be exempt from the law, including churches, schools, airports and stadiums.

“I’m mystified by these exemptions,” said state Rep. Julie Hamos, an Evanston Democrat. “They are in fact a major concession by the proponents that people who carry concealed guns are inherently unsafe.”

Earlier in the day, a Senate committee stalled an effort to allow Peoria residents to carry concealed weapons. The legislation is Senate Bill 3292.

Bradley’s legislation is House Bill 6249.

Childrens’ fitness another casualty of random gunfire

BY SUE ONTIVEROS Sun-Times Columnist

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Every day, my friends and I walked to and from Bowen High School. Summers, we walked the mile-plus to swim at the beach. Winters, we’d skate in Bessemer Park.

Parents drive us there? Please. We wanted to be on our own, so we walked.

In all seasons we’d travel to this neighborhood or that, often to do nothing more than check out the boys, but still, we were on foot and moving. And having a blast.

Those early years set the groundwork for a lifetime of making physical activity a priority. That’s why it makes me sad to hear this is not how life is for Chicago teens anymore.

A new study by the research arm of Children’s Memorial Hospital shows that less than one-third — 28.8 percent of those surveyed — of Chicago teenagers get regular exercise.

It also reports that as the students get older, they attend gym classes less. Eighty-one percent of Chicago freshmen go to PE class, compared with 35 percent of seniors.

Maryann Mason, an assistant professor at Northwestern University who was involved in the study, agrees that the findings are troubling because exercise helps strengthen bones and wards off chronic illnesses such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Mason also points out that what you do — or don’t do — when you’re young determines how you’ll live the rest of your life. “Healthy behavior, like all behaviors, is learned early. So if at a young age [you were not physically active] that means you’re more likely not to pick it up as an adult,” Mason says.

I wish I could tell Chicago parents to send their kids outdoors, make them walk to school. But in good conscience, I can’t. I know many parents don’t allow their kids outdoors because they worry about their safety.

Mason said this study didn’t look at that, but said other work she has been involved in has indicated safety is a factor, as well as a lack of green space and available activities.

That students aren’t out and being active doesn’t surprise Thom Mannard, executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence.

He has a lot of contact with parents who tell him they keep their children indoors because of fears of violence in their neighborhoods.

Those concerns are not unfounded. Schanna Gayden was 13 when she was killed in a Logan Square playground.

Ten-year-old Nequiel Fowler was walking from a friend’s house in South Chicago when she was shot and killed. Both were caught in gang crossfire. And the list goes on.

Parents hear tragic cases like that, and who can blame them for keeping their children indoors? Even if parents aren’t discouraging them, kids know what’s happening on their streets, so they steer clear.

“There should be an ability for our kids to be outside, to ride bikes, walk to a friend’s house, without fear of being a random victim of gun violence,” Mannard says.

We know random gunfire has ended the lives of so many innocent young victims. Now we can see the effect it’s having on an entire generation.

Bessemer Park, where I once skated? Gang members congregate there and spill out of the park as students leave Bowen, the high school I walked freely to and from.

School administrators there had to arrange to have CTA buses stop right in front of the school so students wouldn’t be harmed on the way to the bus stop.

No, I cannot tell parents to let their teens be out and active. And that’s a damn shame.

Letters to the editor: Handguns in home are the real hazard

Studies have shown that it is much more likely for a handgun in the home to be involved in an unintentional shooting than to be used in self-defense. Unfortunately, most adults who purchase handguns don’t often consider the risks involved with bringing a handgun into the home, even when young children and teenagers live there.

Not only is it more likely for an unintentional shooting to occur in homes with handguns, but the risk of a suicide or a homicide happening in a home with a handgun is also higher than a home without a handgun. While there is certainly a possibility that a handgun in a home might be used at some point in a self-defense situation, people need to realize that there is a greater chance that a handgun will be used in quite a different way, often with tragic consequences for the people who live in that home.

Thomas Mannard,
Niles Executive Director
Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence

11/18/09

New Web site tracks concealed weapons incidents

original story found at WBBM News Radio 780

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CHICAGO (STNG) — The Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence points to statistics compiled on a new Web site to argue that the state’s prohibition against carrying concealed handguns in public saves lives and protects law enforcement.

According to a new Violence Policy Center Web site — www.vpc.org/ccwkillers.htm — concealed handgun permit holders killed eight law enforcement officers and 77 private citizens (including 10 who killed themselves) from May 2007 through October 2009, a release from ICHV and VPC said.

Illinois and Wisconsin are the only states to prohibit the carrying of concealed handguns by private citizens. But both states have been targeted by the gun lobby to repeal their prohibitions.

Illinois gun violence prevention advocates say the prohibition has saved lives and should be a model for other governors and legislatures.

“Clearly, Illinois law enforcement officials and state residents are much safer by not having a dangerous carrying concealed handgun law,” Thom Mannard, executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, said in the release.

“When you look at the troubling incidents of concealed handgun permit holders murdering police officers and other citizens, you have to ask, how in the world can elected officials permit such risks to community safety?” he said.

The web site offers detailed descriptions of the 46 incidents in 18 states. Of these, 10 were murder-suicides involving firearms and eight were mass shootings (three or more victims) that claimed as many as 11 lives at a time. Law enforcement officers were killed in Florida (two), Idaho, Ohio and Pennsylvania (two), all with guns.

Kristen Rand, legislative director for the Violence Policy Center, said in the release, “This new Web site makes clear that contrary to the false promises of the gun lobby, the simple and deadly fact is that state concealed handgun systems are arming cop-killers, mass shooters and other murderers.”

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October 7, 2009

Chicago Violence Haunts Obama as Gun-Control Backers Left Cold

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Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) — At least 47 school-age children in Chicago have been killed in homicides, mostly by guns, since the month President Barack Obama took office.

The latest youth homicide in his adopted hometown was different only in that the attackers used splintered railroad ties and were captured on video broadcast globally.

The Sept. 24 attack prompted Obama to send his attorney general and education secretary to Chicago today after the killing tarnished the city’s drive to win the 2016 Olympics.

“The savage beating of Derrion Albert, recycled on television, embarrassed Chicago and the nation,” said the Reverend Jesse Jackson, a civil-rights activist and founder of the RainbowPUSH Coalition. “You can’t ignore the case.”

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder plan to appear at City Hall with Mayor Richard Daley in what the Obama administration described as a search for solutions to youth crime. They also will meet privately with students and parents.

Chicago’s violence has long burdened Obama’s political career, including the embarrassment of a missed vote as a state senator that hurt his 2000 bid for Congress. Duncan, 44, a Chicago native and Obama friend, admits to “total failure” in curbing violence during his seven years as chief of the nation’s third-largest school system, which serves more than 400,000 students, 85 percent of them living below the poverty line.

Some gun-control advocates question the administration’s timing as Duncan and Holder arrive after a highly publicized beating that didn’t involve a gun.

Missed Opportunities

“Where there have been opportunities for the president to speak out about the issue of firearm violence, he has missed any number of opportunities,” said Thom Mannard, executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence.

Doing so in the Albert case “provides the cover” to address youth violence without confronting the gun lobby, said Mannard, whose group’s board of directors included Duncan until he left for his current post.

The administration defended its record.

“President Obama is committed to combating violence on our streets and in our schools, both in Chicago — which has been particularly hard hit — and around the nation,” White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said in a statement. “The administration has focused on the issue of youth violence from the outset.”

The beating death of Albert, 16, an honor student, renewed outrage and prompted a call to action in a city where 398 students were shot in the past 12 months, said Monique Bond, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Public Schools. Four teens have been charged in connection with Albert’s killing.

Obama Sermon

The incident happened less than five miles from a church where Obama gave a sermon in July 2007 challenging the government, the gun lobby and the public to stop gun violence.

“Our playgrounds have become battlegrounds,” he told a standing-room congregation. “Our streets have become cemeteries. Our schools have become places to mourn the ones we’ve lost. The violence is unacceptable.”

Obama at the time called for better enforcement of existing gun laws, tighter background checks on gun buyers and a permanent assault-weapons ban.

Some of the students involved in the recent fatal fight live in Altgeld Gardens, a public housing project where Obama worked in the mid-1980s as a community organizer.

At Risk

Like Obama, 48, Duncan is familiar with youth violence in Chicago. Duncan was replaced as Chicago schools chief by Ron Huberman, a former Chicago police officer and transit official who is experimenting with a $30 million project to focus on about 1,200 high school students in danger of being shot.

The district identified those students based on grades, attendance and serious misconduct. The analysis suggests the 200 high school students most at risk have a 20 percent chance of becoming a victim of gun violence.

One of Obama’s first high-profile brushes with the anguish associated with gun violence came amid his unsuccessful primary campaign for Congress against Representative Bobby Rush, a former Black Panther.

Rush’s son was shot in October 1999 and died four days later, producing an outpouring of support for the incumbent.

Gun Vote

Later that fall, the Illinois legislature was called into special session to consider gun-safety initiatives that Obama supported.

When a crucial vote came earlier than expected, Obama was in Hawaii visiting the grandmother who helped raise him. The legislation failed by five votes as he remained in Hawaii to help care for a sick daughter, sparking criticism.

Daley initially played down the impact of the Albert case on the city’s Olympics bid. Still, his first public comments upon his return from Copenhagen were to address the violence and the “code of silence” surrounding it.

Gun issues in Chicago will remain in the national spotlight following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Sept. 30 announcement that it will hear a challenge of the city’s handgun ban, implemented in 1982 to combat urban crime.

Duncan said earlier this year that his attempts to curb violence were ineffective when he oversaw Chicago’s schools.

“I thought I had made things better in some areas,” he said April 14 in Chicago. “This is an area where I was a total failure.”

To contact the reporter on this story: John McCormick in Chicago at jmccormick16@bloomberg.net.

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7/6/09

YOUNG, BLACK MALES GETTING SHOT: WHAT TO MAKE OF THE MURDERS OF CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENTS

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Thirty-seven Chicago Public School students were murdered in the 2008-09 academic school year and then two more students – Shawn Wilson, 16 and Abraham Tabani, 15 – were killed in June as summer vacation started. The spike in murders of CPS students – 21 were killed in the 2007-08 – has alarmed city educators, politicians and community advocates. Asked about the murder rate, Mayor Richard Daley struggled to defend Chicago to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper last month. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois recently met with Attorney General Eric Holder about how the federal government can help.

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