Ex-gang member Wallace “Gator” Bradley wants to own a gun
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter/fspielman@suntimes.com January 10, 2013 4:46PM
8-19-04 Here is Wallace Gator Bradley in front of the City of Chicago near Wolf Point and the Merchandise mart .... for frank main story sun-times photo by al podgorski
Updated: February 12, 2013 2:44PM
Former gang enforcer-turned-“urban translator” Wallace “Gator” Bradley showed up at City Hall Thursday to ask a bold but important question about his desire to own a handgun in Chicago.
Can a felon who has since been pardoned get a firearm owners permit from the city?
“I’m gonna try to get one of those cards and I’m gonna be [exercising] my Second Amendment rights,” Bradley told the City’s Council’s Public Safety Committee.
Saying he wants the handgun for his “own protection,” Bradley added, “I’m trying to remain a law-abiding citizen. And I want all my rights as a law-abiding citizen.”
Committee Chairman Jim Balcer (11th) told Bradley he didn’t know the answer about pardoned felons but he vowed to get one from the city’s Law Department.
Bradley served four years and a day in Stateville prison for armed robbery and burglary. He was granted executive clemency in 1990 by then-Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson.
Chicago’s latest gun law was rushed into place in 2010 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Chicago’s 28-year-old handgun ban.
Last summer, a federal judge shot down the section used to deny a man a gun permit because of a misdemeanor conviction. Aldermen approved a re-write that would permanently bar anyone who has been convicted of a felony violent crime.
Bradley was once a confidant of convicted murderer and gang kingpin Larry Hoover. He has since become a political gadfly and go-between.
In a strange twist during police torture victim Aaron Patterson’s civil case, a judge allowed Bradley to sit in court with Patterson’s attorney as an “urban translator” to control the volatile defendant.
