Getting guns across state lines
Gun shows, like this one in Houston, can allow some to take advantage of legal loopholes when purchasing firearms. (Courtesy M&R Glasgow: CreativeCommons /Wikimedia)
With the number of mass shootings on the rise, more than 20 states have passed strict laws regulating how people can buy and carry guns. However, with other states that enforce much fewer restrictions being only a short drive away from Chicago like Indiana and Wisconsin, the effect is lost as guns begin traveling across borders undetected.
The Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives national data reflects that approximately 60 percent of guns used in crimes across Illinois came from out of state. The top three states supplying these weapons to Chicago are Indiana, Mississippi and Wisconsin.
Indiana contributed 3,269 weapons to Illinois’s amount of illegal guns from 2010 to 2014 – more than three times that of Mississippi (1,002) and Wisconsin (898). Nearly 20 percent of guns recovered at crime scenes in the city between 2009 and 2013 originated in Indiana, according to a 2014 report from the Chicago Police Department.
However, with a strong opposition of stricter gun regulations from a majority of the Republican Party and major funding organizations like the National Rifle Association, it is not a simple fix.
“One thing we’ve tried to push for is universal background checks, which is so modest in that one person who could have been charged with a felony, or had an issue with a mental health background – it’s hard to imagine who would be against that,” said Ill. Rep. Jan Schakowsky. “After each one of these shootings I thought, ‘enough is enough,’ but it doesn’t seem to be that way.”
In 2015, the Chicago Police Department had confiscated 6,521 illegal guns by early December. The significant haul did not come as a surprise because in 2014, the police department alone confiscated 6,429.
At least two gun shows occur every weekend in various parts of Indiana throughout the year, leaving the possibilities high to find a private dealer who is not required to conduct a background check on the buyer or provide paperwork recording the transaction.
There are no retail gun dealers within Chicago city limits, because Chicago has some of the tightest municipal gun regulations in the country. Most guns are originally bought from retail stores elsewhere, but people who may not pass a background check can easily obtain guns from family members, friends or illegal dealers.
Under Illinois’ universal background check law, residents must show a state-issued Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card or concealed carry permit for all purchases of firearms or ammunition regardless of point of purchase. Lost or stolen guns must be reported to the police within 72 hours.
Illinois also requires a waiting period in order to purchase a firearm – only one of four states to enforce this law – so that a person must wait 72 hours to obtain a handgun or 24 hours for a shotgun or rifle. Residents who wish to abide by conceal carry laws must take a 16-hour training course in the state of Illinois, as no other state’s concealed carry license is recognized.
Indiana’s gun laws are much simpler. Federally licensed gun dealers are required to perform standard background checks inside of their shops, while vendors selling pieces of their “private collections” at gun shows are not. An Indiana resident could walk out of a gun show with a legally purchased assault rifle that same day without a background check and drive less than an hour to Chicago in order to distribute a gun on to the street.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel has long urged state lawmakers to pass a bill pending in Springfield that would ‘toughen the penalties for those convicted of gun crimes.' Critics have pushed Emanuel to sue Gov. Pence and other local branches of Indiana government to encourage the creation of tighter gun laws – an unprecedented action made by a city mayor against another state.
Mississippi is the second-largest contributor to Chicago’s growing gun violence issue, although the connection between the two goes deeper than lax regulations; it’s historical.
During the Great Migration, U.S. Highway 61 became the route many African Americans followed to northern industrial cities to escape oppression in the South between the 1920s and the 1960s. This became the gateway of the Mississippi Delta, a path that brought rich cultural heritage to Chicago but simultaneously led to the creation of a gun trade pipeline still in use today.
As job opportunities began to fade in the 1960s and 1970s and neighborhood segregation initiated the creation of ghettos, drug distribution led by Chicago gangs became a growing and violent business on the South and West Sides. Though the city tightened restrictions on owning and selling firearms, gangs turned back to the South where the laws were lenient and they still had family connections.
Unlike in Indiana, anyone with a Mississippi state ID over the age of 18 can purchase multiple guns from a dealer’s shop without a permit, waiting period or firearm registration.
Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi passed a law in April making the state one of 11 that permits “constitutional carry,” or carrying a concealed firearm without a concealed carry permit.
The end result has created an exchange of Chicagoans traveling south, recruiting family members and acquaintances to purchase guns for them, and bringing those weapons back to sell on the street. Though authorities have made significant progress in obstructing the pipeline throughout the last decade, a large percentage of guns still make it through.
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