Mayor Rahm Emanuel and survivors of gun violence are showing their support today for proposed new gun legislation.
A bill pending in the Illinois General Assembly would raise the mandatory minimum prison term for illegal gun possession from one to three years.
Emanuel says 100 people involved in shootings and murders in Chicago this year would have been in prison if tougher sentencing policies already were in place.
But a prison watchdog group tells the Chicago Sun-Times the new law would take away a judge’s discretion to sentence offenders to boot camp instead of prison.
They say inmates who complete alternative sentencing programs are less likely to become repeat offenders.
Jim
Are they stupid this is the murder capital of the united states with already a million guns laws on the books. People are ready to conceal and carry. Chicago needs to grant people their constitutional rights to enable them to protect themselves. People need to step up to the plate and start voting these idiots out of office and finding their own candidates to end the Chicago machine.
bob
So this new law is supposed to change things how? After all, the judges don't even give out the mandatory 1 yr sentences as it is….What a joke as usual…
Lightengine
The black community is being terrorized by feral black males (less than 4% of the population) that commit 50% of the murders in this country. The black murder rate, with or without firearms, is 6.4 times the non-black murder rate. Most murders are initiated by arguments. We could save 4,000 black lives per year if the black murder rate just equaled the non-black murder rate. This ongoing long term tragedy will never be addressed unless it is acknowledged. The cowardly media and politicians, however, prefer to allow this cultural phenomenon to be portrayed as a problem caused by firearms.