Shoot a gun tonight, face stiffer penalties: Weis

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New Year’s Eve revelers who plan to shoot off guns, beware: You not only can be arrested, you can face mandatory jail time.

A new law mandates one to three years in prison for anyone without a valid Firearm Operators Identification Card (FOID card) who unlawfully uses a loaded and uncased firearm. Besides facing a mandatory prison term, people who accidentally shoot an innocent bystander face even harsher punishment and cause unfathomable pain and loss to the victim and his or her family, said Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis and 28 pastors, gun victims’ families and law enforcement officials at a news conference Friday.

A fully-staffed police department Friday night will saturate neighborhoods identified as problem areas for gunfire, and will arrest people who are seen shooting, Weis said.

Weis is intent on ensuring no new additions to Chicago’s homicide total — 431 as of Dec. 27 — which is on track to make 2010 the least murderous year in 45 years, Weis said.

City and state police also will be ticketing speeders, people not wearing seat belts and those who appear to be driving drunk, the officials said. Partiers should report unattended packages as well as people shooting, tampering with surveillance cameras or doing anything else that looks suspicious, the officials said.

For anyone unmoved by threats of punishment, the families of innocent victims begged people to consider the harm they do to others when they act irresponsibly.

Sandra Robinson, a minister at the Apostolic Church of God at 63rd and Kenwood, lost her father, Sam Jones, about 25 years ago when a drive-by shooter hit him as he stopped to help a woman who had been beaten outside of a bar in the Roseland neighborhood. Jones was 52 and a steelworker. About six years after her father’s death, Robinson’s close family friend, Marvin Cheeks, was killed in a carjacking. Cheeks was a firefighter and the brother of NBA player Maurice Cheeks.

“After these devastating experiences, I became more sensitive to others in pain,” Robinson said.

Alice Norris, a founding member of parents’ advocacy group “Purpose Over Pain,” lost her 14-year-old daughter, Rolanda Lakesia Marshall, after Marshall was shot by a drive-by gunman while sitting in an Austin restaurant. The gunman fired 14 bullets; one hit Marshall in the head.

Norris, her surviving daughter and four of her five grandchildren rang bells to urge New Year’s celebrants to do the same as their celebration.

“Please don’t shoot your guns in the streets,” Norris said.

“Rolanda was an honors student. She was a dancer, a singer, a writer and a teacher” recognized by several scholars and student programs, Norris said.

“It is a sad day to talk about what people do with their guns. No one should have to bury their child. ... I have learned that life will go on, but it will be different. I want to be the example (to other parents) that, ‘Yes, you can live and survive.’”