WBEZ | gun laws

Emanuel pushes mandatory minimums for gun crimes, but research shows they are ineffective

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:45:00 -0500

Harold Pollack cares deeply about Chicago’s murder problem and he knows a lot about it too. In 2008, when he was part of the team working to establish the Crime Lab at the University of Chicago, he read through medical examiner reports for 200 consecutive homicides of young men in Chicago, and a couple things about the murders really stood out.

“They were impulsive acts where a gun was present, and so an altercation that would have led to somebody getting punched in the face suddenly becomes someone being sent to the morgue,” said Pollack.

Another thing that stood out to him was just how deadly guns can be, and like all of us who grieve over the high number of young people being killed, Pollack is looking for any solutions that could help reduce the number of murders in Chicago.

“We have many people in the city walking around carrying these really lethal weapons and causing tragedies for themselves and other people and if we can make that less common by the imposition of the risk that they’ll face some sort of a mandatory minimum sentence if they’re caught, I think we’ll save some lives,” said Pollack.

That’s why Pollack supports Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s push to impose mandatory minimum 3-year sentences on all people caught carrying an illegal gun. In fact Pollack testified in Springfield before legislators considering the law, and his appearance carries some weight because he’s the co-director of the Crime Lab at the University of Chicago, which is dedicated to using science to improve crime policy. So as I was doing research for this story I went to Pollack to see what research he has to show that mandatory minimums will work. His answer surprised me.

“Well I don’t think we have research that nails it down,” said Pollack. “I must say I personally am very influenced by the situation in New York.”

The situation in New York -- that’s one of the main “arguments” Emanuel and Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy have repeatedly made over the past few months as they’ve pushed their agenda on gun legislation..

“And just look at New York,” said McCarthy at a press conference this week. “It couldn’t be a clearer example of how to do this. The fact is, where these conditions exist, it’s working. I mean, what research do we need?”

Well, Frank Zimring did do the research. He’s a professor of law at the University of California Berkeley and author of the book “The City That Became Safe: New York’s Lessons for Urban Crime and its Control.”

“The mandatory minimum punishments, is, if you study the New York experience, beside the point,” said Zimring.

Zimring studied 19 years of data tracking crime in New York. He says in 1990 the city had 2,250 murders. In 2012, it had 419. That’s an astonishing 80 percent drop in murder.

It’s that success that’s being used to justify the mandatory minimum sentences being proposed by Emanuel and McCarthy, but mandatory minimums weren’t signed into law in New York until late 2006.

“That’s after 90 percent of the crime reduction!” said Zimring. “I think that what’s going on is that the superintendent and the mayor in Chicago are under a ‘do something fast political pressure,’ and in my experience, at least, that’s never been good for penal codes.”

So, mandatory minimums were not part of the formula that led to New York’s success. But can they work to deter crime? Police Superintendent McCarthy has been making the argument that they can.

At his weekly press conferences on guns and mandatory minimums McCarthy has been profiling cases where young men who had previous gun charges are either shot or charged with shooting someone. Here’s what he said at a press conference at the beginning of April:

“Akeem Manago was shot and killed this weekend. In April, less than a year ago, 2012, he was sentenced to 42 months for aggravated battery and one year for aggravated UUW. He was paroled on January 28th and two months later he was shot and killed. With truth in sentencing he would have been incarcerated instead of on the street to be a crime victim,” said McCarthy.

“It’s an emotionally powerful claim your police chief is making,” said Mike Tonry, a professor of law at the University of Minnesota. “Probably most people’s intuition is that it’s legitimate, which is why it’s an effective public argument. Of course it’s completely intellectually dishonest.”

“It’s simple, with 100 percent accuracy, to make statements like that retrospectively, say, this guy was convicted, didn’t go to prison, six months later committed an offense, don’t you see if he had been sent to prison six months ago this wouldn’t have happened,” said Tonry. But he says the problem is that if you go back six months and look at the number of people who came to the attention of police that day, there’s no way to know which ones would reoffend in the future unless you lock them all up and that gets costly.

The Illinois Sentencing and Policy Advisory Council has studied Emanuel’s mandatory minimum and told legislators that if the law had been in effect over the last three years it would have cost the state an extra $400 million in incarceration expenses.

Tonry says there are better ways to spend that money to bring down crime. “You could do some things with greater police intensity, changes in patrolling techniques, all kinds of outreach work with gangs, all kinds of community center stuff that would probably be more effective,” said Tonry.

In a 2009 paper on mandatory minimums Tonry looked at sentences before the laws took effect and after and surprisingly he found that the sentences were often exactly the same. The mandatory minimums had no effect because prosecutors and judges simply found ways to work around them, most commonly by bringing charges without attached mandatory sentences.

In such cases Tonry says the mandatory minimum laws are just political theater and fall into a category of law called expressive punishment laws.

He explains them as “Laws that are meant to essentially convey a message to the public irrespective of what they do in practice, and since your mayor is a smart guy and I’m sure he is surrounded by smart people, I have no doubt that they perfectly well understand that this is a symbolic proposal of their making and if it’s enacted they will claim credit for having responded to public anxiety and having done something about whether or not it’s likely to have any effects in the real world,” said Tonry.

But so what? What’s wrong with passing a law that says we as a state take it very seriously when people carry guns illegally?

Tonry says if the mandatory minimum proves misguided as such laws often have -- it will be tough to take back. “No state has yet repealed any major bit of expressive tough-on-crime legislation,” said Tonry. “It’s really hard to do.”

Emanuel has said he’s confident that mandatory minimums will be part of any new state gun legislation. In announcing his push for mandatory minimums he said, “When you commit a serious gun offense, you should serve the time. The victims deserve it, the public demands it, and the criminal justice system shoud deliver it.”

Without Means: The role of guns in suicide deaths

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:06:00 -0500

Lindsay Van Sickle’s dad loved to shoot. He lived on a farm and hunted as a little boy. As an adult, he spent time at the shooting range. He collected what she calls “cowboy guns” and loved the history behind some of his WWII firearms.

Van Sickle describes her dad as the life of the party. But he also struggled emotionally. In July of 2011, he took one of his guns, locked the rest of them up, left his house and shot himself at a park. He was 54. The year he died, of the 30,867 gun deaths in the U.S., 19,766 were suicides.

Van Sickle says her dad was a model of responsibility with guns.

“At the house they were locked up in the basement. I didn’t even know where the keys were,” she said. “Even a few of my dad’s cousin’s who grew up kind of like my dad, were shocked that he would take something he loved so much and use it to end his life.”

As Van Sickle watches the news, and sees all these debates about guns, she’s found herself wondering, what role these suicides play in the debate.

“When something like this happens, you can’t help but wonder about the what if. If laws were different, if rules were different, if the outcome would be the same,” said Van Sickle.

I posed that question, about laws and suicide, to Dr. Cathy Barber at the Harvard School of Public Health.

She says first, it’s important to note why the method of suicide matters.

A number of years ago, Barber was helping develop a new system for the federal government called the National Violent Death Reporting system.

“In the process of doing that, I would read through thousands of suicides, little thumbnail sketches of suicides,” Barber recalled.

Barber was surprised at how many of the suicides seemed impulsive. Barber, like many others, assumed that suicide is something people plan. In another study, people who almost died in a suicide were asked how long after they decided to attempt suicide did they actually try it. Twenty-four percent said under 5 min. Two-thirds said under an hour. Only 16 percent said a day or more.

“You’d think this is such a huge decision, you’d think it would be a more deliberative one,” said Barber.

This matters because even though people may have long battles with depression, the window of time in which they actually want to attempt suicide is small. And many people who survived suicide attempts, never go on to try again.

So Barber, came to a simple conclusion. What mattered in that tiny window was the instrument available to the person wanting to commit suicide.

“There is a huge difference across methods of suicide in how likely they are to actually kill. Firearms are actually at the top of the heap.”

Suicide attempts with a gun, result in death 85 percent of the time. Poisoning, for example, only results in death 2 percent of the time.

State suicide statistics illustrate this as well. Eastern states, like Massachusetts have a much lower rate of suicide death than Western states like Wyoming. They don’t vary much in depression rates or even suicide attempts.The biggest difference is the number of guns in each state.

This has gotten some public health workers thinking about a method called “means restriction.”

The term comes from the U.K., where gas—sticking your head in the oven—was once a leading means of suicide.

“Back in the 1960s, they started replacing the source of gas with a non-toxic source, and suddenly suicides in Great Britain went down by a third,” Barber said. “And so that’s when we started realizing means restriction actually can save lives.”

But of course, “means restriction” with guns in the U.S. is not as simple.

Gun control usually focuses on homicide. Even laws like waiting periods, or background checks, haven’t really been shown to help. That’s because people usually don’t go out and buy a gun for a suicide.

What matters is having a gun around. And no one is proposing laws that would get guns out of homes all together.

“I don’t see it as being in line what the courts have decided about second amendment rights,” said Barber. “I mean people can have their opinions about this, but personally, my interest is looking at this and saying ‘how do we save lives right now.’”

So Barber’s approach is a public health one. Her project based at Harvard School of Public Health is called Means Matters. She encourages programs that work with, not against gun owners. For example, a New Hampshire project trains gun shop owners in suicide prevention. In addition to learning about how to lock up and store a gun, gun purchasers learn about how to keep guns away from suicidal individuals. They also receive resources for mental health support.

But the politicized debates over gun laws sometimes spill over to these public health approaches too. Dr. Joseph O'Neil used to work as a family doctor. At appointments, he asked about general safety concerns.

“When I was talking about car seats, when I was talking about seatbelt use, I often asked families if there was a firearm in the house. And I had several families take exception to that.”

Some patients were so upset, that he would ask what they considered a personal, non-medical question, that they switched doctors.

But O'Neill didn’t stop. In fact, he expanded his efforts. He became part of the Indiana Violent Death Prevention Project. One of the organizations projects was training clergy in suicide intervention.

Over a third of clergy members, said they had actually lost someone in their congregation to suicide. The training helped them counsel potentially suicidal individuals.

“Clergy felt more empowered to say by the way I know you feel this way. Is there a gun in the home, would you be willing to get it out of the house,” said O’Neill.

But they never got to see how well it worked. Their funding, from the Joyce Foundation, the same private foundation that supports this series, ran out. Other funding for firearm injury research is scarce.

The Center for Disease Control funds research on causes of death and injury. But since 1996, most of their research on firearms was restricted by congress, who was pressured by the NRA.

Another problem: The Consumer Product Safety Commision, which regulates household products like toys or cars, doesn’t oversee firearms.

O'Neil said there just isn’t the same oversight or information on guns. “Since 1975, we’ve reduced the number of infants killed in motor vehicle accidents by 75%. For toddlers, 50%. I wish we could do that for firearm injuries.”

But without the research dollars and oversight, he thinks they won’t. “It’s sort of like going without a compass. We don’t know where we’ve been and we don’t know where we are going unless we have the data.”

Both Dr. O'neill and Dr. Barber say that the current political battles over guns are a catch 22. It brings more attention to their issue. But it makes any mention of guns so contentious their work becomes political. And it’s hard to talk to gun owners-- the very people most at risk of gun suicides-- without coming across as anti-gun.

As for Lindsay Van Sickle, the experience of actually losing someone to a firearms suicide has changed the way she feels.

“If you have a gun, even if it’s for hunting or protection, there may come a time in your life that you may be depressed. And that may be a means to take your life. So I am definitely more nervous and scared about guns now based on what my dad did to himself.”

She doesn't’ know if any policies or programs could have changed what happened to her father. But she does think, at the very least, it’s worth us asking the question.

Shannon Heffernan is a WBEZ reporter. Follow her @shannon_h.

Quiz: How well do you know your local gun laws?

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 17:21:00 -0500

Starting next week, we will explore the various gun laws around the region, how they came to be, whether they are enforced and how they affect our lives. That's our next series from Front & Center. Flashpoint: A look at our region's gun laws.

Widening of Chicago's gun offender registry law raising civil rights issues

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 17:04:00 -0600

Proposed changes to Chicago’s gun offender registry law have raised some civil liberty issues.

The proposal widens the current law to include anyone who commits a violent crime with a firearm.

Supporters, like Alderman Ed Burke (14th), say that widening the net will help police and parents keep better tabs on gun offenders in their communities.

That’s because new gun offenders under the revised law will be added to an online pool of current gun offenders that is accessible to the public.

Alderman Emma Mitts is on the public safety committee that passed the ordinance.

She wasn’t included in the unanimous voice vote because she left the meeting early. Mitts said this would be a good tool for police, but worried about its impact on citizens.

“I’m sure it would not be good for people of my color,” she said. “It’s just another tool that’s going to be used against them, especially minors.”

Similar to Chicago’s sex offender registry, Chicago residents can search for gun offenders in their neighborhoods by putting their address into a search box on the police department's website.

Search results include a photo of the offender, details of their conviction and other information.

Matthew Robison is a civil rights lawyer with Barrido and Robison LLC in Chicago.

He said even though offenders will only be on the gun offender registry list for four years, it could have a lasting impact on people's reputations.

“What is placed on the Internet can’t be undone,” he said. “So the question is not as much should we be ostracizing or dehumanizing these people, although that’s a question in it of itself, so much as who it is that we’re going to subject to this.”

Robison said it’s important that there’s a balance between the right of the public to have this information about gun offenders versus the right of gun offenders to live a private life.

“I think what legislators all over the country [need to] figure out where that balance lies,” he said.

The revised ordinance will be up for a vote at next week’s city council meeting.

'I feel better knowing I have the option of not being a victim'

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 12:48:00 -0600

In WBEZ’s ongoing series, "Our Guns," we talked to gun owners about what role firearms play in their lives. In this segment, we spoke to a gay man and a transgender woman who own guns.

The idea to explore gun ownership from this perspective came from a national group called Pink Pistols. The group advocates gun ownership in the LGBT community. Their tagline is “pick on someone your own caliber,” and “armed gays don’t get bashed.”

Gwendolyn Patton of Pink Pistols says the group changes the perception that gay people are easy victims.

"We teach queers to shoot, then we teach the rest of the world we’ve done it," she said. "Because then they may think twice about using (LGBT people) as a target.”

It’s difficult to know just how big the Pink Pistols movement is— Pink Pistols doesn’t keep a national count.

LGBT leaders told us that gun ownership used to protect against hate crimes was rare. But Pink Pistols said that being out of the closet didn’t mean you were out of the gun cabinet, so there may be more gay gun owners than we know.

There isn’t currently an active Pink Pistols group in Chicago. But we did find to two local LGBT gun owners. Both say they own guns, in part, for recreational use. But protection played a role, too.

Tallie lives in Oak Park, Illinois and was initially scared of owning and operating a gun. So, she pushed herself to practice and has become more and more comfortable with using one. She said she believed it's her right to defend herself.

OT lives in Chicago Heights, Illinois. He's a small business-owner who first bought a gun to protect his business from burglary. He said he wants anyone thinking about causing harm or damage to think twice about messing with him.

For these hunters, it's not all about the geese

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 15:54:00 -0600

When goose hunter Neal Brooks says you’re in for a cold, early morning, he means every word of it.

“Well, it is 6:36 and it’s a brisky eight degrees,” Brooks told me one bitter, late January morning, as I arrived at the clubhouse of his Mazonia Hunt Club in Gardner, Ill., about an hour southwest of Chicago.

It’s actually a little generous to call it a clubhouse: We’re in a refurbished auto mechanics’ garage, which Brooks has made a bit cozier with hot coffee, old recliners and a cable hunting show on TV. On the walls is a menagerie of North American game trophies– ducks, pheasants, deer, elk – all stuffed.

This is the rendezvous point, where the hunters get the blood flowing before going out for game - in this case, Canada geese.

Brooks agreed to let me tag along on a hunt with a couple his clients, so I could hear how hunting informed the way they think about guns and shooting. As part of WBEZ’s “Our Guns,” reporters have been profiling local gun owners to document the range of relationships people have with firearms, at a time with politicians and activists debate gun laws in Washington and in statehouses across the country.

For hunters and sportsmen, the relationship to guns and shooting is often part family tradition, part politics and part fun.

Mike Blaske, 32, a logistics manager in Lockport, says his life as a hunter started when he was a boy, going out with his dad.

“So once I got old enough, my dad was looking for another hunting partner, and uh, took me when I was young, when I was about seven years old. And I didn’t have a gun or anything, but I sat in the blind and watched him,” Blaske said, as he got ready for the morning’s goose hunt.

Tradition and family, for some, are a big part of hunting.

“I recognized as a kid that if I was gonna see my father during hunting season ... I’d better be hunting with him,” said Scott Early, 63, a retired Chicago securities lawyer. Early’s backstory sounds familiar: his father, their hunting dogs and some elusive pheasant.

“Once you got started, no matter what you’re doing now, you’re gonna find a way to get back to it,” Early said. “It gets in your blood. And that’s where I am now.”

As the sun gets higher, everybody pulls on their camouflage outerwear and climbs into an SUV that takes us to the hunting site. The shotguns are stowed in the back of the truck, unloaded.

As we drive, I feel like I’m asking the obvious, but I want the hunters to tell me what their guns mean to them. Early raises an eyebrow at the question.

“That would be like saying, ‘How do you regard your golf clubs?’” he said. “The golf clubs are just a means to an end. For me, and I think, for a lotta hunters, the enjoyment you get is the process, as much as the result.”

We reach our destination. It’s a harvested corn field of stubbled stalks with a long, low hut near one edge, camouflaged by reeds.

This is the goose blind - where the hunters sit hidden in folding chairs, so as not to spook the geese and ruin their big shot. Everybody climbs in, loads their guns, and the waiting begins.

Early says he owns a handful of guns, but has only every purchased one himself; the others were handed down by relatives, or won at waterfowl conservation raffles.

The one with him today is a shotgun, covered in camouflage to match the blind, the kind of gun that’s made to handle extreme cold and take a beating.

And today, that’s good protection to have: The wind chill is about eight degrees below zero, according to our guide, Larry Juhl, who says he’s been hunting geese for nearly 60 years.

Juhl was out in the field even earlier than us (when it was even colder) to set out our decoys. There are about fifty of them, and they look remarkably like real geese. Juhl stands them huddled in little clusters around our blind, set up to look like they’re eating or sleeping or standing watch – a pattern designed to attract actual geese flying overhead.

“Because I flew helicopters in the Army, I have an appreciation for runways,” Juhl says, explaining exactly why his decoy spread is supposed to be so inviting to Canada geese. “And the last thing you want on a runway is something on it. You want it all to yourself.”

Goose hunters couple this with calling the geese, to create a scene that makes the animals want to land in this particular field. All of this work is what Early says makes him love the process.

“[S]eeing, in this case, a goose, lock its wings and come down and come in, and it’s a gorgeous, gorgeous sight,” he said. “And it’s like, you’ve done all this work, you’ve put all this patience and time in, and now it’s the fulfillment of it.”

But by around 9:30 a.m., the hunters are still unfulfilled.

“You ever had days where it was a good morning to sleep in?” Juhl asks rhetorically. “I think that’s what the geese are doing this morning.”

But the men swap hunting stories; they share jokes; they sip steaming hot coffee. At some point, the conversation turns toward politics.

Blaske, the other hunter, points out the shotgun he’s carrying isn’t all that different from the type of military-style assault rifles some people want banned.

“My gun - I could use - anybody could use a shotgun as a malicious weapon as well as a assault rifle,” Blaske said. “But, it’s not going to be used that way.”

For Blaske, his shotgun is practical. Think getting dinner on the table. But for Early, the ex-lawyer, it’s also constitutional. Think minutemen, anti-tyranny, the Second Amendment.

“It’s very easy to sound paranoid in that discussion, but the short answer to your question is, that’s the way the amendment was drafted, and it was drafted for a very good reason,” Early said. “Because the government knows that it has the citizenry who will not stand for what George Washington called the tyranny of government.”

This lofty talk about the U.S. Constitution gets me rethinking Early’s analogy - how his gun is like his golf clubs. I point out there is no national debate about golf clubs, but he says the similarity is in the attachment people have to their cherished possessions.

“And it may be personal attachment, because it’s been such a useful tool to you. It may be because it has sentimental value. It may be any number of reasons. But it’s not the kind of irrational, psychotic lust that a lot of people make it out to be,” Early said.

By mid-afternoon Early unloads his shotgun to call it a day. The SUV returns to take him back to the hunt club in town – skunked, with not a single Canada goose sighted.

“Our day was, on the one level, frustrating because we didn’t even see anything fly this morning,” he said. “But that’s why they call it hunting, and not shooting. You never know. And, as my father always used to say, You can’t shoot ‘em in the living room so you gotta come out and try.”

Chicago City Council approves gun ordinance

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:58:00 -0600

Chicago's City Council is increasing jail time for anyone who fails to report guns that have been lost, stolen or sold.

Wednesday's vote on an ordinance proposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel is part of an effort by city and county officials to crack down on so-called straw purchasers. Those are people who legally buy weapons and then provide them to convicted felons and others who are barred from owning firearms.

Earlier this month, the Cook County Board of Commissioners approved an ordinance that imposes fines of as much as $2,000 on suburban residents who don't report when their guns are lost, stolen or transferred to someone else.

Wednesday's ordinance by the City Council doubles the maximum sentence for failing to make such a report from three months to six months

Emanuel praises Obama's gun-safety plan

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 13:27:00 -0600

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is praising the gun-control plan proposed by President Barack Obama.

Emanuel says the president's proposal is "a thoughtful, comprehensive approach to gun-safety rules."

In a statement Wednesday, Emanuel says such rules are the type of common-sense laws needed to help prevent the gun violence that often plagues the nation.

Obama on Wednesday unveiled the most sweeping proposals for curbing gun violence in two decades. He's pressing Congress to pass universal background checks and bans on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines like the ones used in the Newtown, Conn., school shooting.

Gov. Pat Quinn says he stands with Obama too.

Quinn says Obama's actions are "the first step of a comprehensive public safety plan that Congress must act upon." In a statement Wednesday, Quinn says lawmakers shouldn't wait another day to pass legislation to help prevent tragedies like last year's mass shootings in Colorado and Connecticut.

The Democratic governor also has called on the Illinois General Assembly to pass an assault weapons ban.

Another top Illinois House Democrat says lawmakers should pursue state-level gun restrictions and not wait to see what Congress does.

House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie says "gun violence is no stranger" to urban Illinois. The Chicago Democrat says legislators should revive restrictions on semi-automatic assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition feeders despite President Barack Obama's call Wednesday for national curbs.

Currie was a co-sponsor of legislation prohibiting military-style assault weapons like that used in the Connecticut school massacre in December. But it wasn't called for a vote in the final days of the last session of the General Assembly earlier this month.

Currie isn't sure whether even the heavily Democratic Legislature will go along with such measures because of resistance from gun-rights advocates.

Obama unveils $500 million gun violence package

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 11:00:00 -0600

WASHINGTON — Braced for a fight, President Barack Obama on Wednesday unveiled the most sweeping proposals for curbing gun violence in two decades, pressing a reluctant Congress to pass universal background checks and bans on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines like the ones used in the Newtown, Conn., school shooting.

A month after that horrific massacre, Obama also used his presidential powers to enact 23 measures that don't require the backing of lawmakers. The president's executive actions include ordering federal agencies to make more data available for background checks, appointing a director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and directing the Centers for Disease Control to research gun violence.

But the president, speaking at White House ceremony, acknowledged the most effective actions must be taken by lawmakers.

"To make a real and lasting difference, Congress must act," Obama said. "And Congress must act soon."

Obama vowed to use "whatever weight this office holds" to press lawmakers into action on his $500 million plan. Still, even supportive lawmakers say the president's proposals — most of which are opposed by the powerful National Rifle Association — face long odds on Capitol Hill.

The president was flanked by children who wrote him letters about gun violence in the weeks following the Newtown shooting. Families of those killed in the massacre, as well as survivors of the shooting, were also in the audience, along with law enforcement officers and congressional lawmakers.

"This is our first task as a society, keeping our children safe," Obama said. "This is how we will be judged."

The president based his proposals on recommendations from an administration-wide task force led by Vice President Joe Biden. His plan marks the most comprehensive effort to address gun violence in more than two-decades.

The president is asking Congress to renew the ban on high-grade, military-style assault weapons that was first signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1994 but expired in 2004.

Other measures before Congress include limiting high-capacity ammunition magazines and requiring background checks for all gun buyers in an attempt to close the so-called "gun-show loophole" that allows people to buy guns at trade shows and over the Internet without submitting to background checks.

Obama also intends to seek confirmation for B. Todd Jones, who has served as acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives since 2011.

The president's long list of executive orders includes:

— Ordering tougher penalties for people who lie on background checks and requiring federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.

— Ending limits that make it more difficult for the government to research gun violence, such as gathering data on guns that fall into criminal hands.

— Requiring federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.

— Giving schools flexibility to use federal grant money to improve school safety, such as by hiring school resource officers.

— Giving communities grants to institute programs to keep guns away from people who shouldn't have them.

Chicago mayor plans gun control ordinance

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 14:17:00 -0600

Mayor Rahm Emanuel says he's working on a gun control ordinance for the city of Chicago after an assault weapons ban stalled in the Illinois General Assembly.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Emanuel said Thursday that waiting is not his "strong suit." The mayor says he hopes Chicago's efforts will push Springfield lawmakers to ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips. Emanuel wouldn't offer specifics but said details would be available in "coming days."

Emanuel says he's frustrated that the General Assembly failure to deal with assault weapons during the lame-duck session that ended Tuesday. The mayor says the new state Legislature that was sworn in on Wednesday must begin work "immediately" on the issue.