What Progress Looks Like

The Chicago PD has issued a directive to its officers not to enforce the previous laws which are now off the books:

D. Members will not enforce the following city ordinances:

8-4-010(i) – Disorderly Conduct in that a person carries in a threatening or menacing manner, without authority of law, any pistol or revolver or conceals said weapon on or about the person or vehicle.
8-20-020 – Unlawful Possession of Handguns
8-20-030 – Unlawful Possession of Long Guns
8-20-035 – Unlawful Possession of Unregisterable Firearms – relative to 8-20-170(b) and (c)
8-20-040 – Firearm Kept or Maintained in a Home
8-20-080 – Possession of Ammunition
8-20-110 – Chicago Firearm Permit (CFP) – Required
8-20-140 – Firearm Registration Certificate – Required
8-20-180 – CFP and Registration Certificate – General Provisions
8-20-185 – Additional Duties.

Hey, hey, hey, Goodbye! Eat it Rahm! Chicago is now preempted in these matters.

Related posts (automatically generated):

  1. Should Kids Be Allowed to Shoot?
  2. A Few More Things About Rahm’s Ordinance
  3. Depends on What One Means by Possession

9 thoughts on “What Progress Looks Like”

  2. They only ever enforced those as stand-alone offenses in middle-class neighborhoods. In poor neighborhoods, they were at best enhancements to assaults, robberies, murders, etc.

  4. not going to do anything when a “person carries in a threatening or menacing manner, without authority of law, any pistol or revolver”? that reads like “malicious compliance” to me: “since we can’t stop people from having guns, let’s let them point them at each other and watch what happens?”

    1. Presumably Illinois has a state law that criminalizes waving guns around at people. This order is about Chicago ordinances.

    2. @John, those were my first thoughts, but if you rephrase the wording of the ordinance while preserving the meaning it might say, “Unless you’re a police officer or endowed with their authority, if you conceal a weapon or carry it in a way someone would find threatening, we’ll arrest you.” I think this simple rearrangement conveys the intent of the ordinance more clearly, and thus the need for it to be rendered unenforceable. Certainly carrying concealed by citizens must be allowed, and the idea of carrying it in a threatening way (to someone’s perception) is too broad. Putting an anti-brandishing law on the books might be a good next step, perhaps. For instance, the laws here in Anchorage are pretty loose but brandish a weapon menacingly for purposes not defensive, and they’ll come find ya. I’ve got no qualms with laws that encourage responsibility so long as the protect against arbitrary and selective abuse of rights by those in positions of authority.

Comments are closed.