BRONZEVILLE — The mayor will seek a six-month delay in a court order allowing gun shops in the city, and attacked the "straitjacket" legal rulings that have repeatedly been put on local gun-control laws.
"There's a number of gun laws that have existed on the books in the City of Chicago that we have lost in court," Mayor Rahm Emanuel acknowledged at a news conference Thursday at Chicago Police Department Headquarters.
"While we have to abide by the straitjacket the court put us under," Emanuel said, "I'm going to try to do it in a way that doesn't undermine what we're trying to do in bringing a level of safety and security to the people of the City of Chicago."
Emanuel added that he was instructing Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton to request a six-month delay on the ruling this week by a U.S. District Court judge striking down the city's ban on gun sales, so the City Council can craft a new ordinance regulating firearm sales within the city limits.
"I'm not interested in the purpose of litigation for litigation," Emanuel said. "I'm interested in getting public safety for the people of Chicago.
"Chicago's had a number of decisions that have been undermined by the courts," he added. "I have to respond to the court of law and do it in a responsible way."
Emanuel said the city would "obviously" seek to ban gun sales near schools, but did not address other details on potential legislation.
Both Emanuel and Police Supt. Garry McCarthy renewed their calls for stronger gun laws, in spite of this week's adverse ruling. They said the city ban on gun shops was about limiting "availability."
McCarthy said he had just returned from New York City, where murders have declined even more than in Chicago over the last 20 years, and attributed that to strong gun-control laws. McCarthy pointed to recent shootings in which a man was shot with his own illegal gun while arranging an impromptu tattoo session, and a murder committed with a legal gun stolen in a burglary.
"More guns is not the solution to gun violence," McCarthy said. Noting that he had said as much many times before, McCarthy said, "I beat dead horses all the time."
