In a city rife with examples of children caught up in street violence, the politicians and experts who gathered Monday morning in Chicago to talk about the issue hardly needed another message. But they got one.
About the same time that Mayor Richard Daley was testifying at a congressional hearing about guns and kids, a 13-year-old boy was shot in a South Side elementary school. As is so often the case, the gun was in the hands of another child, and his stated reason for carrying the gun was protection.
The incident occurred about 9:30 a.m. at Revere School, 1010 E. 72nd St., police said. Two 13-year-old boys were sitting across from each other in Room 301 when the boy with the gun took it out of his jacket to put in a desk, police said.
The gun, a .25-caliber Raven semi-automatic pistol, went off, and Jabari Watson was shot once in the right upper abdomen. He was taken to Wyler Children’s Hospital, where he was listed in critical but stable condition Monday afternoon after surgery.
The incident would have fit well into Daley’s testimony or that of several other witnesses called Monday by U.S. Sen. Paul Simon to talk about the toll that gun violence takes. The hearing, at the Dirksen Federal Building in the Loop, was the first in a series to be held across the nation by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which includes Simon and Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, both Illinois Democrats.
They heard from the police chief of Kankakee, who has seen the level of gun violence skyrocket even as the city’s population has fallen; from doctors who advocate attacking firearm injuries as a public health epidemic; and from a convicted firearms trafficker who outlined the ease with which he resold cheap handguns to drug dealers and gang members in New York City.
John Magaw, director of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said raising the fees paid by gun dealers could help stem the proliferation of illegal guns across the country.
As it is now, ATF is ill-equipped to supervise the nation’s 285,000 licensed firearms dealers. “With only 240 ATF inspectors to check their premises . . . it would take us 10 years to inspect all of them,” Magaw said.
The result, Magaw told Simon and Moseley-Braun, is that for $30 to $66 a year, unethical gun merchants can sell to drug dealers, gang members and other criminals with little chance of detection and little fear of punishment.
“What we need are reasonable measures to ensure only legitimate dealers are in the firearms business,” Magaw said. Raising the annual fee to $600-the cost to ATF of processing and administering the license-“is an important step in the right direction,” he said.
According to ATF estimates, the number of licensed dealers could drop to as few as 50,000 if the fee is raised to $600, as proposed by President Clinton. From there, Magaw said, ATF could work better with local authorities to regulate dealers and make them aware of the rules they must follow.
The day’s most compelling testimony came from Thomas VandenBerk of Evanston, who is president of Uhlich Children’s Home, a child-welfare agency that offers residential treatment, foster care and counseling for 250 neglected or abused kids and their families.
“I’ve dedicated my career to protecting the lives of children, but I could not protect my own son,” VandenBerk told the senators. He then detailed how 15-year-old Thomas was shot to death at a Rogers Park party in April 1992, an innocent victim caught in a gang-related shootout.
“Do I seek my revenge against the weapons dealers? . . . Do I attack a system that has greater safety regulations against toys than guns? A system that bans lead paint but not lead bullets?
“Only a victim can sit before you and tell you of the emotional hurt of losing a child through this insanity. But I’m going to tell you that our voices may not be heard very loudly because we feel beaten.
More Top Picks Best Garden Tractors For Small Farms
“Just preparing to speak with you today, and actually being here to speak with you, stirs up so many emotions that I wish could lie dormant.”
While VandenBerk spoke, teachers and pupils at Revere School, 10 miles and another city away, tried to deal with the shooting, which was determined to be accidental. Counselors from the Board of Education arrived to talk with children, and the police did their job as well.
The 13-year-old boy who allegedly fired the gun was arrested and named in a juvenile petition for aggravated battery and two counts of unlawful use of a weapon.
The boy said he had recently bought the gun on the street from a friend, for protection.
“He said he had it because some gangs were trying to recruit him,” said Grand Crossing Tactical Officer Ronald Beach.