by When I hear the word “tweaking” I think of the scene from the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan film “You’ve Got Mail” where Hanks’ character sends an email saying his business requires tweaking.
Yesterday, the Chicago Tribune reported that the Chicago City Council was working on tweaks for their gun range restrictions given the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling in Ezell v. Chicago. Mayor Rahm Emanuel submitted amendments to the Council’s Public Safety Committee. His transmittal letter said he was sending these amendments at the request of the Superintendent of Police and the Corporation Council.
The council’s Public Safety Committee on Tuesday recommended approval of a tweak that would cut in half the licensing fee to open up a shooting range. The cost would be $2,000 for two years.
The city also would reduce the minimum distance a gun range would have to be located from homes, parks and houses of worship to 500 feet from 1,000 feet.
Other changes include requiring a registry of all shooting range patrons for at least one year. This registry would include not only their name and date and time of visit but also their FOID and Chicago Firearms Permit numbers. Another change was an amendment to the range air filtering and ventilation requirements which went into very technical detail.
M. Rose Kelly of the City’s Law Department said they had tried to anticipate the Appeals Court ruling. She said that after reading the court’s ruling, “we’ve looked at the shooting range ordinance and feel that it needs some tweaking in some areas to come into compliance.”
Whether the changes will still pass muster are still debatable. They are still quite restrictive and I think Chicago is doing the “with all deliberate speed” approach to this with emphasis on “deliberate”.
Living in the former meth capitol of California (and perhaps the country), the term tweaking brings to mind something far different, yet ironically you have to wonder what, exactly mayor Emanuel and his city council are smoking when they come up with these regulations.
@Dylan!: You learn something new all the time. Never knew "tweaking" was associated with meth usage.
Indeed, have seen the occasional Santa Cruz Mountain area bumper-sticker on battered old Volvos and Hondas that reads, "Tweakers Suck" – which is unusual for Happy Hippies to disparage anyone but reflects the danger that mountain meth-heads represent relative to mushroom eaters.