Chicago Cops won't charge 2nd man in a week to shoot, wound intruder

[RamboLiberal]

A drug suspect fleeing Chicago police chose the wrong home to break into Thursday on the West Side. A resident inside with a handgun wounded the intruder, authorities said.

While the wounded suspect was hospitalized and later charged, police declined to seek criminal charges against the 27-year-old South Austin resident with the gun, despite the city's decades-old handgun ban.

It was the second time in a week that police didn't seek charges against a city resident apparently using a gun in self defense. The man in Thursday's shooting had a valid firearm owner's identification card, but also a misdemeanor conviction for unlawful use of a weapon.

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Marshall ran two blocks north, coming to a gated home in the 300 block of North Long Avenue. When the suspect crashed through the home's front window, police said a resident, fearing for his safety, shot Marshall in the chest.

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The resident, who cares for an elderly relative, declined to comment later in the day. Court records show that the resident pleaded guilty in 2002 to a misdemeanor weapons charge for possessing a 12-gauge shotgun.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-06-03/news/ct-met-intruder-shooting-0604-20100603_1_charge-2nd-man-handgun-ban-possession

[spin]

1. Good. It's long past time for the stupidity in Chicago to end. (n/t)

[one-eyed fat man]

2. Illinois law interferes with Chicago dumbass

The Illinois Legislature addressed this problem after a home invasion in the Gun Free Zone of Wilmette, making it nearly impossible for police to charge people violating the gun ban if the gun/s are discovered after a self-defense incident. We're seeing that the word is getting out among people who live in Chicago that there's a law that applies here that, in effect, says, "If you have a gun inside your home and you use it in self-defense against someone who breaks into your home, you're not going to be charged with any city law that says you may not have a firearm in your home."

ILLINOIS
(720 ILCS 5/24-10)
Sec. 24-10. Municipal ordinance regulating firearms; affirmative defense to a violation. It is an affirmative defense to a violation of a municipal ordinance that prohibits, regulates, or restricts the private ownership of firearms if the individual who is charged with the violation used the firearm in an act of self-defense or defense of another as defined in Sections 7-1 and 7-2 of this Code when on his or her land or in his or her abode or fixed place of business.

(Source: P.A. 93-1048, eff. 11-16-04.)

[proteus_lives]

3. The Chicago cops and DA are smarter then that filth Daley.

[DonP]

4. High visibility exceptions do not make the bad law go away

Daley is carefully choosing not to prosecute these two very high profile cases that involve older African American men.

IMNSHO If this involved a younger white person from a more upscale area of the city, not as plagued by gang issues, I have no doubt he'd prosecute them and try and make an example of them.

The fact that he is choosing not to, for purely political reasons, has no impact on the law at all.

[Euromutt]

5. It all chips away at the foundation, though

After two highly publicized cases like this, anyone whom the city of Chicago did try to prosecute would have a damn good case that the city was enforcing the law selectively, even capriciously.

[DonP]

6. I just want the damn thing off the books, once and for all

And I'd take great joy in SCOTUS holding Daley in contempt for refusing to obey their decision. He's such an arrogant little bully, he will ignore the MacDonald decision if it doesn't go his way, and the ISRA and NRA will have to keep taking him to court again and again.

He'll stall implementing it until he chokes on a Polish at the Taste of Chicago, keels over and his successor takes office with a $300+ million legal bill piled up. But it's not like it's his money so just hike property taxes again.

Every person that he chooses to prosecute has to come up with the legal fees to literally fight city hall.

I'm sorry for the rant but I hate that pompous little asshole for what he's done and continues to do to an otherwise great city.

[PavePusher]

7. You know...

If gun owners were as blood-thirsty and rebellious and anti-government as some anti-gun-rights people around here claim, Daley would have been fertilizer long ago.

Just sayin'...

[jazzhound]

8. Excellent point. n/t