Gun Bills based on emotions, not logic

By Pete DeLaney  march 2018

Our State Representatives have been spitting out numerous Gun Control Bills the last two weeks with more to come. The problem with the Bills is that they are based on emotions, not logic.  Chicago Police Chief Eddie Johnson and religious leaders from Chicago have traveled to Springfield to rally our State Legislature to pass more gun control bills while ignoring their own accountability of the crime related deaths in the Windy City.

The specific causes of Chicago having the honor of the highest gun deaths in the country are simple. First, many politicians refuse to enact added mandatory minimum sentencing to persons convicted of crimes committed with a firearm. Second, the court system including the State’s Attorney’s Office refuses to charge most criminals for all the felony crimes that they commit in a single event and routinely plea bargains down just one or two of the charges while dropping the rest. Criminals never go to court and spend only a fraction of the time they face. This system reduces the back log of cases from the court docket and serves as a revolving door releasing dangerous felons back on the street to commit more crimes.

A recent investigation reveals that the Chicago Police Cmdr. Paul Bauer was killed by such a criminal. Shomari Legghette was a four time convicted felon that never served even a fraction of the time in prison that his crimes warranted because most of his charges were dropped in plea deals to facilitate the revolving door in the Cook County Court System.  If he was held accountable for all the class x felonies that he committed he could have served over 30 years in prison. Is Legghette an exception? No, records show that last year only 37 percent of homicide or attempted homicide cases ever went to trial, the remaining cases were plead down to lesser sentences.

The third and most recent contributing factor of crime is the Bail Reform Act of 2017. This State wide Act was lobbied by Cook County and Chicago to speed up the bonding and releasing of persons charged with misdemeanors and low level felonies such as thefts and drug charges.  Defendants with no means to post cash bonds are able to be released on recognizance bonds with only their signature required for release. The procedure is cumbersome for overworked judges in Cook County and increases the chance of releasing the wrong type of criminal. One Presiding Judge in a down state county calls it” a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist”, but in a Crowded Cook County Court system expect problems.

In answer to a broken-down Court system in Cook County, all of our Democrat State Representatives along with a few Republicans have decided that the cure to this is numerous laws that will turn three million legal gun owners into felons, leave amour car drivers, small store owners in high crime neighborhoods and firearm instructors less protected and impose a duplicate licensing system for small firearm dealers. 

Pete DeLaney of Crest Hill