Emanuel Puts Positive Spin on Chicago’s Violent Crime Problem

Even though Chicago has more murders than any city, its mayor, Rahm Emanuel, says it’s not the “murder capital,” Politico reports.

Emanuel appears to base his conclusion on a study ranking Chicago 21st in terms of its per capita murder rate. However, this ranking compares Chicago (population 2.7 million) to towns with populations as low as 100,000. While apples-to-apples in terms of using rates instead of numbers of crimes, it isn’t apples-to-apples to compare a big city with small towns.

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Study: “Assault Weapon” and CCW Restrictions Associated With Higher Murder Rates

In a new study, Mark Gius, of Quinnipiac University’s Department of Economics, has found that between 1980 and 2009, “states with more restrictive CCW laws had gun-related murder rates that were 10% higher” than those of other states. Gius also concluded that state “murder rates were 19.3% higher when the Federal [‘assault weapon’ and ‘large’ magazine] ban was in effect.” Gius says that more research is needed to determine whether these gun control laws contributed to, or merely coincided with, higher rates of crime.

Nationally, murder rates have certainly been lower since the federal gun and magazine bans were in effect. The bans went into effect in September 1994 and expired in September 2004. During the 10 years 1995-2004, the average annual murder rate was 6.2 per 100,000 population. From 2005 to 2012, however, the average rate has been 16 percent lower, at 5.2 per 100,000.

Federal District Court: California’s Waiting Period to Acquire a Firearm Violates the Second Amendment

On Monday, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California issued an opinion holding that California’s 10-day waiting period for nearly all firearm sales violates the Second Amendment, at least as applied to certain individuals. The opinion, written by Judge Anthony W. Ishii, generally found California’s justifications for the waiting period insufficient to overcome the burden the waiting period placed on Californians’ right to keep and bear arms.

The court first concluded that the waiting period created a burden on the Second Amendment. Specifically, it found the state failed to put forth any historical evidence showing that the waiting period should fall outside the scope of the Second Amendment or was one of the types of longstanding and presumptively lawful regulations identified by the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller. Because the court determined that the waiting period burdened the Second Amendment, the state was required to show a “reasonable fit” between the supposed state interest furthered by the law, public safety, and the state’s rationale for how the waiting period furthered that interest.