Group turns tables on Chicago gun turn-in, uses money for gun camp

BY FRANK MAIN

Staff Reporter

fmain@suntimes.com
Last Modified: Jul 1, 2012 11:04AM

A Downstate pro-gun group says it turned payouts from Chicago’s firearm buyback program last weekend into a fund-raiser for a youth summer camp — a National Rifle Association shooting camp, that is.

The city collected 5,500 guns last Saturday in the annual buyback. The city gave out $100 MasterCard gift cards for each gun and $10 cards for BB guns and replicas.

Sixty of the guns and several BB guns were turned in by the Champaign-based Guns Save Life. In return, the group received $6,240 in gift cards, said John Boch, president of the group...

Most of the money will go toward buying ammunition for an NRA youth camp in Bloomington. The rest will pay for four bolt-action rifles that will be given away to campers.

Gun amnesty bit of a misfire

ANOTHER year, another gun amnesty. And yet another photo op involving an earnest police officer looking serious and concerned in front of a pile of firearms.

It looks such an important and effective exercise in community policing. Let’s get all these nasty (cue scary
music) guns off the street.

Except, if I may borrow a phrase from the English lass at work, it’s bollocks.

The amnesty and previous gun buy-back schemes are, for all practical purposes, public relations exercises. The effect on violent crime rates would be negligible because the sort of person who might hand in an old rifle at the cop shop is not exactly the type of ‘‘person of interest’’ associated with violent crime.

That sad collection of museum pieces and rusty old .22s pictured in The Courier last week, looked sinister enough but hardly constituted a menace to society. You see, criminals will always find ways to get illegal firearms or explosives or whatever, when they want to.

Gun amnesty alongside tougher SA laws

Legislation allowing for the jailing of people who illegally discharge guns has been introduced in the South Australian Parliament.

It is a response to cases including recent drive-by shootings in Adelaide.

SA Attorney-General John Rau said the bill creates a new offence of discharging a firearm without a lawful excuse.

Once the legislation passed, Mr Rau said a three-month amnesty would open for illegal weapons to be surrendered to police.

"The clear objective of this legislation is to put behind bars people who engage in any crime using firearms and to make any of these individuals who are in the habit of leaving home with guns in their vehicles or on their person to realise that if they are detected by the police they can expect to go to jail," he said...

Customs admits illegal gun import X-ray blunder

Posted May 24, 2012 14:08:16


Customs officials have revealed that their X-ray machines did not pick up more than 100 pistols that were illegally imported through a Sydney post office.

Police arrested four people in March over the Glock pistols that were allegedly posted from Germany to the Sylvania Waters Post Office.

Representatives from the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service were questioned about the case during a federal Estimates hearing in Canberra this morning.

At the time police said they had seized more than 200 handguns, but today's Estimates hearing was told about 122 pistols, triggers and magazines were sent by airmail.

Gun amnesty bit of a misfire

ANOTHER year, another gun amnesty. And yet another photo op involving an earnest police officer looking serious and concerned in front of a pile of firearms.

It looks such an important and effective exercise in community policing. Let’s get all these nasty (cue scary music) guns off the street.

Except, if I may borrow a phrase from the English lass at work, it’s bollocks.

The amnesty and previous gun buy-back schemes are, for all practical purposes, public relations exercises. The effect on violent crime rates would be negligible because the sort of person who might hand in an old rifle at the cop shop is not exactly the type of ‘‘person of interest’’ associated with violent crime.

That sad collection of museum pieces and rusty old .22s pictured in The Courier last week, looked sinister enough but hardly constituted a menace to society. You see, criminals will always find ways to get illegal firearms or explosives or whatever, when they want to.

Gun amnesty alongside tougher SA laws

Legislation allowing for the jailing of people who illegally discharge guns has been introduced in the South Australian Parliament.

It is a response to cases including recent drive-by shootings in Adelaide.

SA Attorney-General John Rau said the bill creates a new offence of discharging a firearm without a lawful excuse.

Once the legislation passed, Mr Rau said a three-month amnesty would open for illegal weapons to be surrendered to police.

"The clear objective of this legislation is to put behind bars people who engage in any crime using firearms and to make any of these individuals who are in the habit of leaving home with guns in their vehicles or on their person to realise that if they are detected by the police they can expect to go to jail," he said...

The state law of preemption also prevents municipalities from banning semi-automatic assault weapons or reducing the number of bullets in a magazine clip from the 30-bullet capacity used by the killer at Virginia Tech.

To: kevcol
The purging of voters in Florida will have to be a surgical endeavor as to not purge the votes of conservative Cubans in Miami Dade and not purge to votes of conservatives in the Florida panhandle.

17 posted on Thursday, June 07, 2012 2:54:26 PM by Uncle Slayton