[legion]

More cracks in the dike...

http://www.suntimes.com/news/brown/1057950,CST-NWS-brown16.article

I was in attendance mostly by accident, thinking I'd be seeing cases brought under the city's handgun ban ordinance. But my mistake turned into an eye-opening experience that I don't want to ignore just because it didn't fit my anti-gun politics.

You hear gun owners complain all the time about how our gun laws too often make criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens, and this seemed a pretty good illustration of that.
...
Charles Wilson, 78, and a South Sider, was in trouble for being two months late in re-registering his five guns.

"I don't have any objection to re-registering my guns," said Wilson, who had done so for years, but this time the city won't let him.

Wilson said he spent 36 years in the Army, serving in both Korea and Vietnam. He said he's an NRA-certified gun instructor and a state-licensed security contractor.

"I'm a homeland security officer now, for Illinois," Wilson asserted.

Some further probing by Plesha elicited the clarification that Wilson is actually a security guard with a company called Illinois Homeland Security.

Out in the hallway afterward, Wilson was having a hard time understanding why the city was cracking down on him.

"I'm not no gangster, sir," said Wilson. He said he'll reluctantly get rid of the guns if the city concludes he can't register them. He doesn't want to violate the law.
...
Maybe you're like me and you'd just as soon nobody had any of these guns, but that's the thing: There's nothing to stop them from buying the guns. The city is just saying they can't register the guns. Or if they have registered the guns previously, they can't re-register them if they've been tardy. Does that really make sense? Is it really going to stop the "bad guys" from having guns?

It may be that some of these folks can find relief under the city's 120-day gun registration amnesty period, which went into effect last week in response to Ald. Richard Mell's personal problem with being late in re-registering his own guns. So far, 35 people have inquired about the amnesty and four have registered, a police spokesman said.