Law Blog: All Gun Owners Should Pass a Test and Get a License (Like in Chicago)

GEORGE FREY / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP
GEORGE FREY / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP

In the wake of the outlaw biker shootout in Waco, Texas, where nine bikers were killed, the law blog Chicago Now suggested all gun owners should have to pass a test and get a license—which is what potential gun owners are also required to do in Chicago.

The license Chicago gun owners get is a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card. By the way, 49 people were shot in Chicago over the weekend.

According to Chicago Now (CN), it is too hard to tell when “good guys” with guns will become “bad guys” with guns. The blog assumes that some of the outlaw bikers who opened fire on Sunday may have actually been “good guys” until becoming “bad guys” in the heat of the moment.

Regarding the deaths of outlaw biker gang members, CN surmises that “many” people down in Texas probably “consider these deaths to be collateral damage of our freedoms. They are fine with some people dying so they can protect themselves when the US Government declares war on Texas.”

Then they present their ultimate solution—more gun control.

CN suggests that every gun owner should have to pass a test and acquire a license before being able to acquire a gun. Again, that is exactly how they do it in Chicago, and in all of Illinois for that matter.

So, how are the testing, licensing, and other gun controls working out in Chicago and Illinois versus the exact opposite approach to the Second Amendment in Texas? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 832 people were killed with guns in Illinois in 2012. That represented .006 percent of the state’s population of 12,870,000 at the time. That same year, 1,324 people were killed with guns Texas. That represented .005 percent of that state’s population of approximately 26,090,000 at that time.

Studying such raw numbers may be boring, but it highlights an important truth—the Texas scenario in which people are freer to keep and bear arms worked better than the Illinois scenario where gun rights could only be exercised with an exceedingly great amount of government oversight.

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.

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