The first link on the City of Darien’s webpage is the “10pt Transparency List.” So when I watched the June 17th city council meeting I was confused why the police chief and city council were discussing future legislation to limit gun rights. The second bullet point on the “10pt Transparency List” is “meeting information” which implies that all topics and subjects in city council meetings are listed before every meeting. The agenda and the associated E-Packet have no reference to this discussion. If a citizen searches other communications from Darien, such as the latest Police Chief newsletter and the City of Darien’s latest general newsletter, a citizen would find no mention of this discussion.
The questions that I pose to myself and you: Why would such an important issue by completely scrubbed from correspondeence to the public? Does the city want the citizens to express their opinions?
Why is the city proposing new firearms legislation and what are they proposing?
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On Dec. 11, 2012, The U. S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals declared the state's ban on the Right to Carry unconstitutional. The 7th Circuit justices also granted a 180 day stay on that decision to allow the state legislature time to pass a reasonable Right to Carry law. (See this Link for the story of Mary Shepard). The extended deadline is July 9, 2013 to have a Right to Carry Law in place. According to the conceal bill that passed both the house and senate, the bill would pre-empt municipal home rule authority when it comes to local gun laws, but gives towns a 10 day grace period.
What is the city proposing?
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The city council and police chief are proposing the follow:
- Ban on so called “assault weapons”
- Ban on all firearms that could hold more than 9 rounds
- Registration of all firearms in Darien and poll tax of legal firearm owners
From the video of the city council meeting both the Chief of Police and Mayor look in favor of the assault weapon ban. The first question should be, what is an assault weapon?(since both the Mayor and Chief looked a little confused in the meeting) An assault rifle is a selective fire (selective between automatic, semi-automatic, and burst fire) rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine. If you use that correct definition(above), these firearms are already banned in Illinois. In that case, what is the council proposing to ban? Are they simply banning firearms that look scary? The assault weapon ban in Chicago is based on cosmetic features of the firearms and that appears to be what is being proposed here. For example, a hunting rifle with a pistol grip would be illegal, but the same rifle with a conventional stock would be legal. So what is the purpose of this ban again?
The chief of police is also pushing a ban on all firearms that could hold more than 9 rounds. This is ban mostly all modern day firearms. These types of bans will be challenged in court in the upcoming year. Can Darien afford the legal defense from gun rights groups? Oak Park, Illinois cut a check totaling $663,294.10 to the National Rifle Association of America Institute for Legislative Action for their unconstitutional gun laws. Does Darien have those extra resources or will it come out of the citizens' pockets? I do not believe the NRA will accept undeveloped commercial land as payment.
The final proposal from our police chief is full registration and tax on legal firearm owners. The chief of police wants to know who owns firearms and tax a fundamental right(according to the US Supreme Court). Why does the city of Darien suddenly need to know who are gun owners? Has this been a problem in the past? Is there an new vendetta against legal gun owners?
These three proposed legislation will be proposed by city council under the guise of public safety are in my opinion basically an attack on legal gun owners. I moved to Darien from Cook County, like so many other Darien residents, to escape the overreaching and over- taxing governmental bodies in Cook County. I have yet to hear any justification for these proposals, have you? Please let me know.
The most important thing is that I believe that my stance on the right to bear arms is not the most important part of this blog post. The important part is city council is making an important decision without input from the Citizens of Darien. As citizens of Darien, please contact your Mayor and Alderman and demand a town hall meeting the 2nd week of July. If they have nothing to hide, this should be an easy request to be granted.
Sincerely,
HSS
