After listening to about 20 three-minute speakers at the village government-sponsored forum on Tuesday night, I became convinced of a few conclusions, meriting, I hope, serious consideration.
Which “side” has the “moral high ground” on this incredibly difficult issue? Answer: We all do! All Oak Parkers want the same thing when we really try to be thoughtful and fair minded about each other. Let’s name a few things we all desire: Safety of individuals and, secondarily, property, with special concern about our children; good feelings and camaraderie toward our neighbors and friends; laws that make sense and thus do what they are supposed to do; an openness in “our town” that embodies the spirit of Lincoln that all men (people) are created equal, that lawlessness will not be tolerated and every person gets the same fair impartial treatment by the law — all of this at a financial cost that most of us agree is a reasonable and proper amount to pay.
Fortunately, we all agreed many years ago that we could have all this in our village if we trusted ourselves enough to set up a method to make sure each of us could speak at length in a clear, lucid and thoughtful way, which represented our personal ideas of how we could accomplish our goal.
Over the years, we have done this many times with great success. The Community Relations Commission and the Community Improvement Commission are two excellent examples. We learned that three minutes to speak, then be told to stop talking by a committee chairperson with no one on that committee asking questions or saying anything, never smiling, never frowning, never laughing, is cold, intimidating and makes many individuals, not used to such treatment, feel quite inadequate and frustrated.
This gun ordinance issue clearly deserves the impartial citizens’ treatment approach, not a government-structured, standing committee with a predetermined “charge” by the village board to find ways to “save” the ordinance by finding loopholes in the U.S. Supreme Court decision that lets Oak Park keep something, anything, even if a big risk is taken to invite further expensive lawsuits. We must remember that all other suburbs that had ordinances like ours quietly rescinded them, presumably after weighing the dollar cost of attempting to outfox the U.S. Supreme Court. They decided there was no way to justify keeping them when each of these ordinances had never, at any time, in over 25 years proved of any value in reducing crime of any kind.
We Oak Parkers can surely use our tried-and-true citizens committee approach — six citizens for the ordinance, six opposed to the ordinance, a chairperson for each side, conducting open and extensive citizen input, philosophical, practical, moral and financial discussion with current research information, multiple dates of interviews and, finally, in 3-5 months, a report of recommendations to the Village Board.
Finally, several of us are putting together a request/petition of Oak Park citizens who think this is the right way to truly get a handle on the best way for us to fairly resolve this issue. If you agree, please call Dave Schweig at 708-383-3850 or e-mail daveschweig@comcast.net and leave your telephone number and/or email address. You can also call Dave Gawne at 708-848-4736 and leave your email and/or phone number. We will get back in touch very soon.
