City Council Police Committee seeks tougher gun sentences

Former New York Giants receiver Plaxico Burress accepted a plea bargain and a two-year prison sentence after accidentally shooting himself in the thigh at a Manhattan night club.

If the incident had happened in Chicago, Burress might have walked.

New York has a mandatory, 3 1/2- year prison sentence for carrying a concealed weapon. Chicago has no minimum. People caught carrying illegal weapons seldom go to jail. And if they do, it’s only for a few days.

But today, the City Council’s Police Committee voted to change that at the behest of West Side aldermen fed up with a rash of summer shootings.

The ordinance championed by Police Committee Chairman Isaac Carothers (29th) includes graduated mandatory minimums to minimize jail overcrowding and avoid scaring judges into letting offenders off completely.

The new penalties would be five days in jail for the first offense, 15 days for the second offense and 30 days for the third, with a maximum prison sentence of six months. Fines for carrying illegal handguns would rise from $200 to $300.

Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th) did not stick around long enough for the final vote. But he made a cameo appearance at the Police Committee meeting to raise objections.

Burke noted that “virtually no one can register a gun in Chicago” because of a handgun ban that “makes violators out of honest citizens.” But that hasn’t stopped store owners from buying guns to protect themselves.

“That person who’s going home from the liquor store or the currency exchange, has a gun in his car and is transporting it back and forth . . . could conceivably be subject to mandatory jail time” under the crackdown, Burke said.

“I would hate to see a good valid purpose that you’ve identified here would be used to further criminalize people who really have no criminal intent. . . . If this was tied to another violation — a felony, a ‘UUW’ [unauthorized use of a weapon], then I would say it would be a good idea.”

Carothers countered, “I don’t know how to craft a law that exempts the good guys. We have to send a strong message to people that you can’t carry a firearm in Chicago. . . . As we continue to talk about getting tough on guns, we have to have some laws that back up what we say . . . when people are continually being shot, maimed and killed, particularly in my community.”

Ald. Willie Cochran (20th) added, “If it means building more jails and locking people up, then that’s what we need to be doing.”