Chicago Beats New York, Los Angeles In Murders
Police Supt. Jody Weis To Take Hot City Council Hot Seat
CHICAGO (CBS) ― Chicago is the Second City in nickname and the third in population, but when it comes to murder, the city has the dubious distinction of being second to no city in America.

As CBS 2's Mike Puccinelli reports, the Chicago Sun-Times pointed out on Friday that Chicago has seen 426 homicides this year through Tuesday, compared with 417 in New York and 302 in Los Angeles.

At the end of 1998, Chicago made international headlines as the U.S. "murder capital" after surpassing New York's homicide totals for the first time ever. Chicago shed that dubious distinction when murders plummeted over the last decade.

There are more than 8 million people in New York, compared to slightly under 3 million in Chicago. The population of Los Angeles exceeds that of Chicago by more than 800,000.

Murder is also up, at a lower rate, in New York.

The alarming statistics were expected to come up on Friday when Police Supt. Jody Weis once again appeared before the City Council to address a crime rate that many believe has spun out of control. He appeared at a City Council budget hearing, which began at 10 a.m.

Weis, a career FBI agent, took office this year with a mandate to clean up the department in the wake of several scandals. But murders have risen, and arrests have fallen, on his watch.

Back in July, Weis addressed the media after being grilled by the Council on the subject.

"I don't mind tough questions," Weis said in July, not long after a shooting erupted on the streets of the Loop as crowds were leaving the annual Grant Park fireworks show. "The City of Chicago has the right to ask tough questions, especially when our crime is up nearly 13 percent."

Under tough questioning at a Council hearing that month, Weis suggested there was a "degree of timidness" among officers afraid of having lawsuits and citizen complaints filed against them.

At the hearing Friday, Weis may highlight what police view as a different problem: Officers have spent nearly 5,000 hours filling out inventory forms in the first nine months of 2008. "We'd rather they be on the street," said Beatrice Cuello, deputy superintendent of patrol.

Last year, the Cook County sheriff, who runs the jail, stopped inventorying arrestees' property. Under an agreement with the Police Department, cops took over the task.

"It's not our responsibility," said Steve Patterson, a spokesman for Sheriff Tom Dart. "We had an entire room filled with property.

Chicago is on pace to exceed 500 murders by the end of the year, but that number is far short of even approaching a record. In every year between 1991 and 1994, there were more than 900 homicides in the city, peaking in 1992 with 943 murders. The standing record for homicides in Chicago dates back to 1974, when there were 970 murders.

CBS 2's Mike Puccinelli and the STNG Wire contributed to this report.
(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/nra_targets_obama.html

http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/709/
http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/711/

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:Gun restrictions would work (in theory) to lower crime if there weren't a significant number of firearms already in the community.

There is no point in all law abiding citizens handing back their firearms and all the ratbags keep theirs.
However in saying that a blanket ban on semi-automatic and automatic firearms would work- get caught importing them or found to have them and 20 years mandatory prison time per weapon sounds like it should do the trick...
Within a few years everyone is left with pistols, shotguns and rifles (bolt action preferable)
So you can: Defend yourself, shoot road signs, hunt without any real impediment.

I say a few years as as the banned firearms are used in offences they will eventually be caught, weapons disposed of etc.

Frazzled wrote:I'd be ok with this-its a state right. Leave me alone in my state and the Yankees can do what they want in theirs. But, in three months, that will not happen.

NRA Claim: "Ban use of Firearms for Home Self-Defense"

False: Obama is proposing no such ban.

The NRA bases this overheated claim on a vote Obama cast on March 24, 2004, in the Illinois state Senate. He was one of 20 who opposed SB 2165. That bill, which passed 38 - 20 and became law, did not make it a crime to use firearms for self-defense, however. Rather, it created a loophole for persons caught violating local gun registration laws

NRA Claim: "Ban Rifle Ammunition Commonly Used for Hunting and Sport Shooting"

False: Obama is not proposing to ban hunting ammunition. And he did not, as claimed in an NRA TV spot featuring a Virginia hunter named Karl Rusch, vote to "ban virtually all deer hunting ammunition." What Obama voted for was a measure to ban "armor-piercing" ammunition, which the measure's sponsor has said repeatedly would not cover hunting ammunition.

Clarification, Sept. 29: We originally misstated the NRA’s argument. The group rests its case on the amendment’s language regarding handgun ammunition, not rifle ammunition. The NRA argument goes this way: The Kennedy amendment would have covered ammunition that “may” be used in a handgun and is “capable” of piercing police body armor. A few uncommon handguns can accept rifle rounds, such as the Weatherby Mark V CFP or the Thompson Contender.

NRA Claim: "Ban the Manufacture, Sale and Possession of Handguns"

False: Obama says he does not support any such handgun ban and never has. He supports "reasonable restrictions on the sale and possession of handguns" (not manufacture) and has said a ban is not "politically practicable."

NRA Claim: "Mandate a Government-Issued License to Purchase a Firearm"


Misleading: Obama indeed has spoken in favor of licensing handguns, but so far as we can determine he hasn't called for registration of hunting weapons. And he's said a national gun registration law isn't politically possible: "I just don't think we can get that done."

The NRA's flier isn't entirely false. It states Obama's positions on concealed weapons and on semi-automatic "assault weapons" reasonably accurately.

NRA Claim: "Pass Federal Laws Eliminating Your Right-to-Carry"

True: In 2004, while running for the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat he now holds, Obama indeed called for "national legislation" to prevent anyone but law enforcers from carrying concealed firearms.

NRA Claim: "Expand the Clinton Semi-Auto Weapons Ban to Include Millions More Firearms"


Partly true: The NRA refers here to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which was put in place during former President Bill Clinton's administration. Title XI of the legislation spoke directly to regulations on assault weapons. The law outlawed the semi-automatic versions of 19 kinds of military-style assault weapons, but it expired in 2004. The "assault weapon ban" was always a misnomer, however. Fully automatic weapons – like the military assault rifle carried on battlefields – had always been illegal to own without a very hard-to-obtain federal license, under legislation going back to the days of Al Capone. They remain so today.

NRA Claim: "Appoint Judges to the U.S. Supreme Court and Federal Judiciary Who Share His Views on the Second Amendment"



Unsupported: The NRA's fact sheet points out that Obama has voted against the two newest members of the U.S. Supreme Court. Obama voted against the confirmations of Chief Justice John Roberts in 2005 and Justice Samuel Alito in 2006. They happen to be two of the five justices that voted in favor of the Court's decision to overturn the District of Columbia's longstanding handgun ban this year. The New York Times has reported that Obama "favored Democratic filibusters to block many Republican nominees deemed too conservative." But the NRA can point to no statement by Obama calling for a Second-Amendment test for his judicial appointees, and we could find none.


NRA Claim: "Increase Federal Taxes on Guns and Ammunition by 500 Percent"



Uncertain: This claim is based on an article that appeared in the Chicago Defender on Dec. 13, 1999, when Obama was in the Illinois state Senate. According to the Defender, at an anti-gun rally, Obama "outlined his anti-gun plan," which, among other things, sought to "increase the federal taxes by 500 percent on the sale of firearm, ammunition [sic] -- weapons he says are most commonly used in firearm deaths." As a U.S. senator, however, Obama has not pushed for any such tax on ammunition.

NRA Claim: "Close Down 90 Percent of Gun Shops in America"



Uncertain: This claim also is based on the1999 Defender article. It reported Obama was pushing "all federally licensed gun dealers sell firearms in a storefront and not from their homes while banning their business from being within five miles of a school or a park." The NRA states that the 5-mile limit would have resulted in the closing of 90 percent of gun shops in the country. But as a U.S. senator Obama hasn't pushed for a 5-mile limit and isn't proposing one as part of his presidential campaign.

NRA Claim: "Restore Voting Rights for Five Million Criminals Including Those Who Have been Convicted of Using a Gun to Commit a Violent Crime"



Mostly true: We could find no NRA citation to back up this statement. We note, however, that Obama was a cosponsor of the Count Every Vote Act of 2007. The section of the legislation, "Sec. 701. Voting Rights of Individuals Convicted of Criminal Offenses," states that the purpose of Title VII of the legislation was "to restore fairness in the Federal election process by ensuring that ex-offenders who have fully served their sentences are not denied the right to vote." There has been no action on the bill since March 2007 when it was referred to the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration.

Voted YES on background checks at gun shows. (May 1999)

"Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapons whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority. But it did allow for individuals to have guns for lawful purposes, such as hunting and defending themselves, he said. The majority clearly saw the individual right to own a gun.

Mannahnin wrote:Kilkrazy, my point is that nothing’s changing. You asked how individual states could “pick and choose” on gun control since it’s in the Constitution. I was trying to point out that the Constitution’s guarantee is extremely brief and lacking in specifics. While the right to have a gun must be protected, hundreds of years of Constitutional interpretation have upheld that local jurisdictions have the right to set restrictions on that right.

Frazzled wrote:You're wrong on both counts in a massive way Dogma. They don't want new confiscatory federal legislation impacting all the states.

Your statement #2 is both insulting and itself reflects your own ignorance.