Chicago Tribune: “City Gun Ordinances. . . A Failure”

From a __Tribune editorial:

When Chicago passed a ban on handgun ownership in 1982, it was part of a trend. Washington, D.C., had done it in 1976, and a few Chicago suburbs took up the cause…expect[ing] to reduce the number of guns and thus curtail bloodshed….

_In the years following its ban, Washington did not generate a decline in gun murders. In fact, the number of killings rose by 156 percent — at a time when murders nationally increased by just 32 percent….

__Chicago followed a similar course. In the decade after it outlawed handguns, murders jumped by 41 percent, compared with an 18 percent rise in the entire United States. . . ._

_[Gun-control advocates] wagered that strict controls at the local level would acclimate Americans to new regulations at the national level.

But…the persistence of crime in supposedly gun-free zones…[has only proven] that such regulations have little impact on the people who present the biggest danger….

Gun control supporters fear that if the Supreme Court invalidates local handgun bans, the consequences will be nothing but bad. That would be easier to believe if the laws had ever done any good.
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