So you may have heard that Chicago recently had its gun ban struck down by the Supreme Court. Now the city has released this list of “unsafe handguns” that they are banning. Most of them are antique firearms, or things like disguised guns. A bunch of them are simply guns without trigger guards. I’ll admit that at first glance, something without a trigger guard seems very unsafe, but they are often single action revolvers, which can’t fire unless the hammer is manually cocked first.
However, here are a few puzzling items on the list:
- All handguns by Hi-Point, they are cheap and pretty ugly, but I’ve never read about them being inherently unsafe. There are several other manufacturers of “cheap” pistols listed.
- The Sig Mosquito, certainly a high quality manufacturer and I’d like to know why this is unsafe.
- The Walther P22, same as above.
It seems possible there is an attempt here to eliminate affordable guns that might be used for self defense by folks with fewer financial resources. We’ve seen “Saturday Night Specials” bans before and it, yes these cheap guns are sometimes unsafe, or used by criminals as throw away guns, but they are also used by folks who can’t afford more for perfectly legal means. The fact that there aren’t any reasons listed in the document is troubling. Even if someone like Hi-Point wanted to address the issues that these legislators “found”, there’s no info for them.
So Chicago, sorry you lost that big case, but show some good sportsmanship here, ‘k?
