Good Luck With That, Chi-Town

I doubt it'll matter much to the elderly widows turning in their husbands' rusty Iver-Johnson revolvers, but the Chicago Police Department is advertising that their gun turn-in next weekend will pass out Mastercard debit cards that can be used anywhere "except gun shops."

Three days after calling and being passed from department to department, I got a call back today . . . . it seems that they're simply "requesting" that people not use the filthy lucre in a filthy gunseller's den, because that would subvert the "intent" of the program.

Right. Have these people even met an American?

On the bright side, I think we're just about done with the polite fiction that they're purchasing weapons the state used to own (this is a "turn-in," not a "buy-back") and might even have seen the end of the old "criminals are turning in these guns" canard. I'd say they just admitted that they expect their customers to be people who take requests from police departments.