6055

May I ask that when people post local news stories like this that you indicate where in the world it is? I read your post and the entire article and if it weren’t literally for the logo of the news station which says “Chicago’s Very Own” I would have no idea where this happened.

6056

Aurora Illinois. One of the largest suburbs of Chicago, about 150k people, and nearly an hour from downtown (probably about 40 miles)

Also infamous for having some of the worse neighborhoods in the suburbs, though much of that perception is driven because it has one of the largest minority and blue collar populations.

Which means that the conversation is going to revolve around how this is because of the ‘type’ of people living in the neighborhood. You have to realize Aurora is largely, though quite inaccurately, viewed by suburban dwellers as equivalent to he worst of the inner city neighborhoods like Roselawn and Austin.

6057

The ILL do look odd to those that don’t see the state often.

6058

It didn’t even register to me that that was a state abbreviation. Maybe I need a different font…

6059

Yeah, I used to live in Aurora, IL. It’s a very large - and mixed - area. But I was never aware of any area as bad as some of those nearer the city (the Austin neighborhood, for one). Only issue I had with Aurora was it was all the way out near Iowa.

6060

I only looked twice an then Googled it because you mentioned it. I overlooked it too because I assumed it would be IL not… well that which is what they have in the article. Not sure why it’s like that.

6061

Oh there aren’t! However that is the perception that the (usually white, upper middle class) populations have of Aurora. I know, because that’s what my family and many people I grew up around said about it!

Seriously, go ask a random on the Naperville Riverwalk about what they think of downtown Aurora. It’ll sound like a warzone.

It’s all overblown. I’d ride my bike into downtown Aurora when I lived in Wheaton all the time. Then shoot up the river trail to Batavia and back. It was fine. Nothing like seeing drug deals on the Prarie Path by the Hawthorne Racetrack in Maywood.

6062

It’s almost as if…gun violence were an…“emergency” in the US. Instead of something imaginary at the south border. I hope history’s takedown of this administration is brutal.

6063

I know.

6064

An update on yesterday’s workplace shooting:

Martin was not supposed to own a gun because of a 1995 aggravated assault conviction in Mississippi, she said.

But he obtained one in Illinois in 2014. In January of that year, he applied for a firearms owner identification card, she said.

In March 2014, he applied to buy a gun from a dealer in Aurora. After a waiting period and passing a background check that did not involve fingerprinting, he bought the gun, she said.

Later that month, he applied for a concealed carry permit, and a fingerprint check led authorities to discover the Mississippi conviction, Ziman said.

The permit was rejected, and Illinois State Police sent him a letter demanding he voluntarily surrender the weapon, but he did not, the chief said. Investigators are trying to determine why he didn’t surrender the weapon and whether law enforcement followed up with him to confiscate the gun.

“He was not supposed to be in possession of a firearm,” Ziman said

As for the victims:

Police in Aurora, Illinois, have released the names of the five Henry Pratt Co. employees who were killed in Friday’s shooting:

• Clayton Parks of Elgin, Illinois. He was a human resources manager.

• Trevor Wehner of DeKalb, Illinois. He was a human resources intern and a student at Northern Illinois University

• Russell Beyer of Yorkville, Illinois. He was a mold operator.

• Vicente Juarez of Oswego, Illinois. He was a stock room attendant and fork lift operator.

• Josh Pinkard of Oswego, Illinois. He was a plant manager.

The gunman, 45-year-old Gary Martin, was killed at the facility in an exchange of gunfire with law enforcement officers, some 90 minutes after the shooting started

And the injured:

five officers and an employee shot and injured, police said.

6065

In these cases, the law is almost never enforced, because

  • Local sheriffs, who would be the ones to enforce the ruling, are mostly gun-rights leaning and would rather err on the side of more people having guns, instead of disarming someone (i.e. choosing to nullify the ruling for ideological reasons)
  • To enforce it, they would need to send a team of deputies to the home of someone who is known to be armed and angry about not getting a gun, and therefore willing to fight to keep his old ones. Too dangerous if they are not believed to be an urgent threat, and no lucrative upside like taking down a drug dealer.

It seems that we would be better off having a team of FBI/SBI specialists who are called in as a disarming enforcement team, instead of relying on your friendly neighborhood sheriff with a shotty in the trunk.


This info was new to me:

"Because it is a federal law that prohibits anyone who has been forced into inpatient psychiatric care from owning guns, local police can’t seize the weapon unless they pass their own companion law. Texas hasn’t. The deputy “had no State authority to retrieve the firearm from Kollaja, even though Kollaja was previously committed into a mental facility by court order,” court documents state.

The police retreated, later contacting U.S. attorneys in Houston. After a 10-day wait, a federal judge finally issued a search warrant."

6066

Sadly these seem precisely accurate.

6067

Last fall, voters in Washington state approved a package of firearms restrictions, generally called I-1639. It raises the minimum age for buying semi-automatic rifles, tightens background checks and makes it a crime to fail to store a gun safely, if the gun ends up in the wrong hands.

The restrictions have raised the ire of some county sheriffs.

“My plan is not to enforce it,” says Klickitat County Sheriff Bob Songer.

Songer is one of about a dozen sheriffs, mostly in rural parts of the state, who have come out against the law. Some say they will apply certain measures — for instance, the background checks — but will ignore others. One sheriff said he is not going to arrest a 20-year-old farmer who happens to have a semi-automatic rifle with him on his tractor.

Man, those must be some ferocious farm gophers in Washington.

6068

There is quite a difference between a farmer with a rifle on their tractor and what the actual laws are from what I can tell.

6069

They have cougars and coyotes in Washington state.
Some cougar killed a guy and mauled another a few months ago.

6070

They are rodents of unusual size.

6071

Montana apparently has some deadly wild warthogs. I saw a YT video of one killing a guy and his dog several times. Luckily he had a flamethrower.

6072

These sheriffs have no business ignoring laws they don’t like. WA isn’t the only place that has cougars, and we don’t all run around packing guns. I can find a video of a bear that likes to take a bath in a pond around here too, a pond in someone’s backyard… doesn’t mean our sheriff should thumb their nose at a new law.

6073

I’m sure if we looked into it, that all law enforcement (police and DAs) also have a lot of selective enforcement policies (or ‘prioritization’). They just don’t usually talk about it like this in public as law nullification.

6074

I think they actually do have that business, right?

I mean, they aren’t state troopers. They are local law enforcement. I don’t think they are actually legally obligated to enforce state laws, right?

Presumably if they do a bad job, then their local population can elect different people as sheriff?