The primary difficulties in maintaining a gun free population is that those Fourth Amendment Constitutional Rights prevent random police searches or people, property and homes hinder enforcement.Two classes of Chicago’s population just won’t cooperate with Daley’s gun ban. First there are those gun owners that just refuse to accept government’s presumed authority to outlaw guns and legitimate self-defense. Then there are the criminals that rob, rape and murder who don’t obey any laws.
Mayor Daley hates anyone who violates his gun ban and could care less what methods police employ to get those guns away from the population.
The methods of some of Chicago officers ran roughshod over the Constitutional Rights of those gun owners. When the complaints of illegal searches came in, they were simply shelved by Daley’s administrators within the police department.
Richard M. Daley has personally suspended our sacred Bill of Rights in order to enforce Chicago’s Gun Ban.
One Chicago gun owner’s horror story
I have a long-time, close friend who was victimized by these illegal and un-American methods. He was a wealthy insurance company owner who lived in Marina City.
My friend became a gun collector who assembled one of the finest collections anywhere. He had many hundreds of fine pistols, revolvers, rifles and shotguns. He had a WWI solid brass antique cannon on his balcony arranged with fabulous flowers.
My friend also obtained a federal firearm collector’s that allowed him to buy and sell firearms across state lines like a dealer.
The guns in the collection were either unfired in their original boxes or as clean as the items could be found anywhere. Few of these weapons were fired as not to lower their collector’s value.
As for my friend’s collection, he was diligent in registering every weapon. I helped him in that labor intensive task. Registration was free at the time. Then the local politicians changed the law. They required re-registration of all privately owned firearms in Chicago.
With the new law came a curious exemption from registration extended to “licensed sellers of firearms”. It was curious because all the gun dealers but for one wholesaler were run out of Chicago. They could have exempted licensed dealers rather than sellers but they didn’t. Licensed collectors were in fact licensed sellers so my friend saw the exemption and did not re-register his collection and pay the thousands of dollars in new fees to the city.
My friend wanted to be able to carry a gun and in Illinois there existed no provision to be able to do so through permits. My friend quickly found a way around it by getting himself appointed as a one day a month Cook County Deputy Sheriff.
With minimal training he not only got to carry his gun but had full police powers. He liked that role and when he retired wanted to enter law enforcement.
A position became available with the Cook County Adult Probation Department and my friend sought and obtained that job. He did it for several years until some rogue cops changed his life.
The Chicago Police Department established a Gun Team to go after those people who did not re-register using previous portions of the city’s registration database. Rather than go out an interview my friend about his collection the Gun Team took the low road.
The officers found a former Chicago cop who had troubles and simply fabricated him as an informant. They also fabricated the information they claimed he gave them.
Soon the Gun Team officers falsified a search warrant application claiming their “informant” told them my friend living in his downtown, Marina City Condo apartment was selling guns to Chicago street gang members.
Of course there was not a single instance of my friend transferring any guns to anyone. He was a collector only adding to his collection and never selling anything.
The well orchestrated and publicized raids were conducted. The bulk of the seized firearms were taken from a room that was converted into an alarmed vault with special military gun vaults inside.
The gun team removed all the guns from their boxes and paraded them past the eager reporters who were painting my friend as mad, middle-aged terrorist. Soon the members of the Gun Team received Department Commendations for getting this man’s exquisite firearm collection off the street.
There were no felony charges to then, Cook County State’s Attorney, Richard M. Daley’s lament. There were instead hundreds of Quasi-Criminal charges having no more weight or penalty than parking tickets.
The case dragged its way through the Cook County Courts for no less than eight years! During that period the city adopted yet more gun prohibitions that outlawed significant portions of my friend’s collection.
One day this ordeal finally ended when the city simply agreed to return the collection and drop the bogus charges. My friend simply agreed to move his collection out of the city. The guns including now banned so-called assault rifles were returned.
My friend sold his four Marina City Condos along with the single home he owned and moved far from Chicago. Chicago will never benefits from any taxes he’d ever pay again.
