City May Expand 'Gun Offender' Registry

CITY HALL — Chicago's gun offender registry needs to be expanded to include the names of people busted committing crimes with a gun, Ald. Ed Burke (14th) said Thursday. And Mayor Rahm Emanuel agrees.

Chicago has a gun offender registry? I was afraid of seeing this happen and so were many others back when the sex offender registries began. The 'It's for the Children' has been used to justify more bad and over-reaching ideas than anything else, in my opinion. How this started, as so many other things are, was a good idea with those sex offenders. The problem was, as we see here, it never EVER ends with what they say it will.

I recall at the time, actually hearing many people insist that the system would specifically never be extended out beyond those most heinous of criminals ...which sold the concept. Now it's gun offenders. Which gun offenders, and does this work like a real registry?

In July 2010, the City Council passed an ordinance establishing a "gun offender registry," similar to a sex offender registry. But the law only requires those convicted of unlawful use of a weapon, which includes illegal possession of a gun among other charges, to register with police.

Indeed...Possession and that comes in a city where possession offenses aren't very hard at all to achieve. The laws being what they are there. It also does note the registering with police, so they keep track. Oh dandy.

Burke said he wanted the public to use such a registry as they would one for sex offenders. It could prove helpful to police as much as parents sending children to a playdate.

"Shouldn't mom and dad have an opportunity to check a gun offender might be registered at that address?" Burke said.

Source

Oh really? Do these politicians even understand the concept of taking these ideas to the level of outright creepy?? One could say it's simply a classification problem and maybe we should drop mere possession crimes (like walking out your front door with your firearm in a state not perfectly in line with Illinois requirements) but then what would it stop at? Armed Robbery?

Okay, lets say just violent gun offenders have to register. Sound good? Then, I'd have to ask, what did using a gun make them special for? Why isn't the guy who committed a serious knife crime or the one who bashes a guy's head in with a brick during a bar fight having to register too? It's a little selective, by my thinking.

Which brings me to my conclusion that it really is aimed at being another anti-gun and not anti-crime measure as it stands and most certainly as they seem to propose extending it. Thoughts?