Um....Duh? Again.

Guess what the eggheads at the U of C discovered? If there is actual punishment, real honest-to-goodness penalties for committing crime, people usually stop committing crime. Honest! And if there is no punishment, then guess what they do?

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s argument for stiffer firearms sentences is bolstered by a new study showing gun possession offenders placed on probation are more likely to get re-arrested for murder than other felons, his police superintendent says.
  
  The University of Chicago Crime Lab studied whether those convicted of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon — a gun possession charge — have higher arrest rates for murders and non-fatal shootings than other felons.
  
  Using Chicago Police arrest data, the study found that aggravated UUW offenders were four times more likely to be re-arrested on murder charges and nearly nine times more likely to be locked up for nonlethal shootings than other felons.

Golly. If these guys spent as much time studying pathogens, their effects on human physiology and how to reverse it, as they do on something a Probationary Police Officer is taught his first week on the streets, we'd have a cure for cancer already.

There is a bill before the legislature to increase the penalty for felons caught with guns, but as usual, Chicago pols have screwed up the language and the NRA has helpfully pointed out how a simple change would actually garner their support for the bill:

• A bill backed by the Emanuel administration and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez would raise the mandatory minimum sentence for aggravated UUW from one to three years and would require offenders to serve 85 percent of their sentences — a “truth in sentencing” provision.
  
  [...] Todd Vandermyde, a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association in Illinois, said he remains opposed to the legislation because he’s concerned first-time offenders could get trapped in the same net as felons.
  
  [...] Vandermyde said he doesn’t have a problem with boosting the penalties for felons caught with guns. But he’s worried about first-time offenders getting three-year prison terms.

Well, you can pretty much be sure that they'll never change the wording now. God forbid the NRA makes sense.