I think the law can be rewritten to allow residents to determine whether they want these businesses in their neighborhoods.
Will Burns
Member of the Chicago Board of Alderman
January 22, 2014
Chicago Officials Say New Gun Control Law Can Be Crafted
[And do they also think they can also write a law that allows residents to determine whether they want a Jewish/Muslim/Christian place of worship in their neighborhood? These officials need to be interviewed by the police instead of the media. Then they should be prosecuted.—Joe]
Hmmmm… What about an abortion clinic. The sword doth cut both ways.
What businesses to allow where was Al Capone’s line of work, wasn’t it?
Isn’t this called “zoning”? I think it’s legal in most places.
Not if it’s used to infringe your human rights.
For example, zoning was at one time used to keep out people with the wrong skin color. Such zoning laws are now invalid, “contrary to public policy”. The same, and for the same reason, goes for the use of zoning or other alleged laws that aim to keep out people who insist on their second amendment rights.
Zoning is used to keep churches out of residential neighborhoods.
Not sure how things are done where you live, but in my town churches are nearly always in residential areas. That’s where the people are, after all, and LDS wards in particular cover a geographic region, meaning the church is always reasonably close to where its attendees live.
Zoning laws are valid only if they’re applied equally to all potential businesses. Singling out one particular class of business should be problematic, and only done if there’s a reasonable need (marijuana dispensaries, bars, “adult” shops, or hookah clubs located next-door to schools, for example). A gun dealer should not be facing any stricter regulation than a convenience store – they’re not demonstrably any more dangerous, and by some definitions are significantly less so. Singling out FFL dealers to not be located within 5000′ of a school campus (for example – though I believe Chicago might try this) would create a de facto ban on FFL businesses; there’s no place in the city that’s not within 5000′ of a school or “Safe Passage Route,” and if there is, they can just make it 10,000′ instead.
It’ll prompt another lawsuit, but as I said below, if it’s overturned the law will be allowed to stand until they come up with something new, and they’ve proven they have no problem being continually and repeatedly challenged.
You basically said what I was saying: Zoning applies to all businesses. No neighborhood has to allow commercial businesses into residential neighborhoods.
I used to live near a town that had no zoning (because it was actually a failed planned community) and you would see things like: house, house, convenience store, house, house, house, auto repair, house. Most communities don’t operate that way. Commercial businesses are only allowed to operate in commercial zones.
The quote Joe posted mentions “neighborhoods,” not cities or towns. I take that to mean “residential neighborhoods.” Zoning allows residential neighborhoods to exclude commercial enterprises.
ubu,
They are talking about specifically rewriting the laws to prevent -firearms- businesses from opening in neighborhoods. If the zoning already prevented -any- business from opening then they wouldn’t have needed to make that comment; and if the zoning already allows all businesses then they are talking about discriminatory practices. Logically, there’s no way to make their comment defensible, it is either redundant or bigoted.
Regardless, in urban areas a “neighborhood” often is mixed use. Apartment or townhome housing cheek-by-jowl with a bodega or grocery store, corner bar, cleaners, cafe, etc. The classic “city neighborhood.”
If they are talking about preventing gun stores in that sort of setting, which were perfectly legal and safe and typical not even 50-60 years ago in many cities, even NYC, prior to the extreme anti-gun rights crowd taking power, then what they are proposing is absolutely bigotry and irrational discrimination.
That’s because churches aren’t residences, and create parking and traffic issues residential streets are not designed to handle due to the concentration of people.
Churches are typically allowed in mixed-use and business zones, just as gun stores and most other types of businesses should be.
Now, many areas zoned residential -do- allow other licensed businesses, that don’t create a lot of traffic nor require excessive parking, to operate from homes.
If that is the case in Chicago’s existing zoning regulations then they need to be consistent and allow home-based FFL businesses that in function are identical to other allowed types, not deny FFL’s simply because “OMG GUNS!”
Never did like zoning laws. They basically tell the land owner that he’s not a real owner, just a caretaker to be milked, er, taxed and controlled. I say do away with most zoning laws, and let the most economically useful activity win.
Yeah, yeah, everybody hates zoning until someone puts something like a chicken slaughterhouse (ever smell one of those things?) next door. Then, suddenly, zoning is okay.
I can’t say that I have been near a chicken slaughter house but I have been near several cattle slaughter houses. Yup. Really bad smell. Pig barns and lagoons (manure and urine) are real bad too.
The Libertarian solution is not zoning but payment of damages for nearby property value losses. I’m not entirely convinced this would work but I’m willing to consider it and look at the data from where it has been tried.
Some see “freedom” as “the freedom to limit other people’s freedom” and a “right” as “the right to violate rights”.
Hence our former mayor in Moscow, ID viewed Preemption as a violation of her “right” to restrict our second amendment rights. “Don’t we have the right to have the kind of community we want to live in…?” Exactly what the fucking KKK was saying.
And once again to the ubu way of thinking, the response to your attempt at an argument is as follows; what’s “legal” and what isn’t legal has nothing to do with this conversation. There are endless examples of laws that violate rights, and rights that are outlawed. Don’t conflate laws with rights and rights with laws.
What we’re talking about is the ideal of having laws and rights coincide. You can cite many examples of where they don’t coincide, and in so doing you are helping to make our point.
Nor is the popularity of various anti rights laws and practices at issue here. Segregation in southern Democrat controlled states in the 1950s was quite popular, at least among white Progressives, but to use that popularity as an argument in support of segregation only makes you out as ignorant, or a bigot, or an ignorant bigot.
I’ve said it elsewhere, but the Chicago political machine can and will use any legal method to make a de facto ban on guns. They will all eventually be found unconstitutional, but we and our groups (SAF, NRA, GOA, etc.) have to expend finite resources to get the laws overturned, while the city/county have nearly infinite taxpayer-funded resources.
Additionally, the court almost invariably orders a “stay on enforcement” to allow the city/county time to try again with a new law.
The end result: We’ll be suing the City of Chicago and/or Cook County every time they craft a new restrictive law until a judge finally decides they’re not acting in good faith – which we’ve known all along, but don’t hold your breath on that one – and each sue/overturn/stay-on-enforcement cycle will buy them another 6-12 months of free* “gun control”
* – OK, not “free,” but at this point it wouldn’t surprise me if Chicago’s (bi-)annual budget has a line for “SAF is suing us again.” City planners gotta plan, and all.
The key then is to sue not just to overturn the law, but to recover legal fees associated with the lawsuit. And, eventually, they’ll be bankrupt (regardless of what you do), an fighting these suits will end, because the city and/or county will be dissolved and in receivership.
“the Chicago political machine can and will use any legal method to make a de facto ban on guns.”
That’s because the political machine’s real paymasters — the gangs — like unarmed victims.