CHICAGO (AP) — The Chicago City Council, forced by a
federal judge to allow gun sales in the city, approved an ordinance
Wednesday that dramatically limits where those stores can open and puts
owners on alert that the city will be looking over their shoulders every
time they sell a gun.
During their discussions, aldermen and
Mayor Rahm Emanuel made it clear that the only reason they were voting
to permit gun stores after decades of a ban was because a federal judge,
following a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that invalidated the city’s
handgun ban, ruled earlier this year that the ban on stores selling guns
was unconstitutional.
"I really wish the Supreme Court justices
who opened up the floodgates on guns had to take the calls I get at 2
o’clock in the morning from police sergeants and lieutenants about
shootings," Alderman Will Burns said before the 48-0 vote. "This is the
best we can do and I’m holding my nose and voting for it."
Aldermen
also listed some of the provisions — which will almost certainly
trigger a legal challenge — including a requirement that all gun sales
be videotaped, another that gun owners open their books for inspection
by police, and restrictions on where the shops can go that prohibit them
in 99.5 percent of the city by confining sales to specific areas and
prohibiting stores within 500 feet of schools and parks.
Not
surprisingly, a gun rights advocate agreed that the city that has for
decades fought to keep guns out of the hands of its residents and faced
repeated lawsuits over its gun laws had all but assured itself that it
will face another one.
"It’s actually an ordinance to prevent gun
shops," said Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State
Rifle Association.
Emanuel disagreed, adding that the city’s law
department examined the ordinance and determined that it is on solid
legal ground. The city, Emanuel said, had written a "solid, tough and
enforceable ordinance." And though he did not discuss the videotaping
provision in particular, earlier he said he believes it is no different
than the common practice of photographing transactions at ATMs.
The
gun ordinance also addresses what police and others believe is a big
reason for what they say is a flood of illegal guns into Chicago and why
the city’s police officers seize more illegal guns than any police
department in the United States: The sale of guns by so-called straw
purchasers, who then transfer them to people who are not legally allowed
to buy and possess firearms.
The ordinance, said Alderman James Balcer, "will now allow employees to be trained so they can
identify straw purchasers."
Further,
the ordinance allows buyers to purchase no more than one gun every 30
days — a hindrance, supporters say, on straw purchasers who would prefer
to buy several firearms at once.
If there is a lawsuit, it will
keep Chicago where it has been for decades: At the center of the
national debate over gun violence and gun control. After the Supreme
Court’s 2010 ruling on handguns, a federal appeals court in Chicago
ruled in 2012 that Illinois’ last-in-the-nation ban on concealed weapons
was unconstitutional. Then came the ruling by the federal judge in
January, and the ordinance approved Wednesday.
But Emanuel, while
not welcoming a lawsuit, suggested it was important to pass the toughest
ordinance possible whether or not it prompted a legal challenge.
"You have to do what you think is right," he said.