Remember all this hot air last summer?

Coalition Files Suit Over Gun Sales in Suburbs

Several mothers of young men killed by gun violence in Chicago are named as plaintiffs in a lawsuit against three suburban Chicago communities: Lyons, Riverdale, and Lincolnwood. The women, along with the Coalition for Safe Chicago Communities and antiviolence activists like the Father Michael Pfleger and the Rev. Robin Hood, are targeting those three villages because gun shops in each village (along with a fourth shop in Indiana) together make up 20 percent of the guns recovered at Chicago crime scenes. Attorneys who filed the suit Tuesday morning explain that those towns have lax or insufficient methods of licensing and regulating their gun dealers, and are therefore disproportionately impacting poor and minority communities in Chicago.

 

Chicago group sues 3 suburbs over gun store regulations

A Chicago community group is suing three suburbs, accusing them of not adequately monitoring gun stores they believe are the source of weapons that have filtered into the city.

The Rev. Michael Pfleger on Tuesday announced the lawsuits against Lincolnwood, Lyons and Riverdale. The activist priest says many of the guns recovered from Chicago crime scenes came from stores in those communities.

Lawyers for the Coalition for Safe Chicago Communities filed the lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court claiming the suburbs’ gun store regulations violate the Illinois Civil Rights Act.

 

Suburbs face lawsuit seeking tougher regulation of gun shops

An anti-violence coalition sued three suburban villages Tuesday, saying they need to do more to regulate gun stores whose weapons have been recovered in large numbers at crime scenes in low-income neighborhoods in Chicago.

The Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina Catholic Church, and the Rev. Robin Hood, a West Side pastor, are among the plaintiffs in the civil-rights lawsuit against the villages of Riverdale, Lyons and Lincolnwood.

Lyons officials said they already have met with Chicago police to address their concerns about a gun shop there, while an attorney for Lincolnwood said officials there could not see “any conceivable basis for liability” on the part of the village.

The lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, says those villages have “lax or insufficient methods of administration in licensing and regulating gun dealers.”

It was all hot air.

It probably won’t surprise you to learn there have been no screaming headlines announcing the lawsuit’s dismissal.

Cook County judge tosses lawsuit brought by Pfleger, other activists vs suburbs over gun shop regulation

(Cook County Record) – A Cook County judge has abruptly ended an attempt by a coalition of Chicago community activists, including Fr. Michael Pfleger and others, to use an Illinois civil rights law to force suburban communities to more stringently regulate gun shops operating within their borders, who the activists say are responsible for a disproportionate share of the firearms used by criminals and gangbangers to terrorize Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods.

On Feb. 25, Cook County Circuit Judge Franklin Ulysses Valderrama dismissed in its entirety the complaint brought against the villages of Riverdale and Lincolnwood by a group known as The Coalition for Safe Chicago Communities. Named plaintiffs in the action also included Pfleger, the Rev. Robin Hood, Louvenia Hood, Annette Nance-Holt and Pamela Montgomery-Bosley.

The lawsuit, filed in July 2015 alleged the villages, located in suburban Cook County, allowed gun shops in their communities to “sell guns in a manner that disproportionately jeopardizes the lives of African-Americans, causes mental anguish and distress and diminishes the value of their homes and other property.” This, the activists’ complaint said, violated the Illinois Civil Rights Act of 2003, which forbids municipalities from engaging in policies that create have a disparate negative impact on racial and ethnic minorities.

The complaint relied heavily upon a report, titled Tracing the Guns: The Impact of Illegal Guns on Violence in Chicago, which was published in 2014 by the city of Chicago. The report indicated about 20 percent of firearms seized by police at crime scenes come from four firearms dealers, including Shore Galleries in Lincolnwood and Chuck’s Gun Shop in Riverdale.

According to the activists, the report called on communities like Lincolnwood and Riverdale to enact “the kind of comprehensive ordinances … adopted by the city of Chicago to curtail the flow of illegal firearms.”

The plaintiffs asked the judge to issue an injunction forcing the villages to “put in place … the kind of measures recommended” by the Chicago gun violence report.

In response, the villages asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit, saying the plaintiffs lacked standing under the law to bring the lawsuit in the first place, and even if they did have the right to sue, had not actually demonstrated the villages had discriminated against anyone. They also argued the courts lacked the authority to order the villages to enact any specific ordinances or rules governing how they would regulate the gun shops within their borders.

Valderrama sided with the villages.