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Chicago’s Crime Spree Won’t Be Solved with Gun Control
For the second weekend in a row, more than 50 people were shot in Chicago. Gun violence continues to rage in the Windy City, despite regular pleas for peace by community leaders, aldermen, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel. After receiving news about six more killed and eight wounded Monday evening, a somber Emanuel spoke with reporters.
“Wherever you live, you should be able to get out of your car and go to your home,” the mayor said. “You can say this happened in the neighborhood of the Back of the Yards, but everybody (who) woke up this morning, or heard it last night, felt a pain of anguish, and it’s time that our criminal justice system and the laws as it relates to access to guns and the penalties for using them reflect the values of the people of the city of Chicago.”
Of course. More gun control.
Blaming the inanimate object is a bad habit of Democratic mayors. After a bloody Memorial Day weekend, Emanuel insisted to a police group, “it is not just about how many police you have, it is about the quantity of guns that are on the street so we actually have gun laws that back up the men and women we just recognized.”
According to the Chicago Tribune, at least 2,300 people have been shot in 2015; about 400 more than at this time last year. Every three hours, a Chicagoan is shot. Every 16 hours, a Chicagoan is murdered. And this is a city famous for its restrictive gun control regime; so restrictive, in fact, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled their draconian rules unconstitutional in 2010.
After Chicago passed its handgun ban in 1982, the percentage of Chicago murders committed with handguns averaged a number approximately 40 percent higher than prior to the law’s enactment. Since murders actually trended down after the SCOTUS decision, they cannot be blamed for the increase in violence. But, sadly, beginning last year, gun violence began creeping back up.
It’s easier for a politician to call for new gun laws than it is to counter gang activity, improve economic opportunity, and modify policing. But it’s obvious that guns are not the cause of Chicago’s woes. In 2013, the city had 15.2 murders per 100,000 people. In that same year, the famously gun-happy city of Phoenix had about half that number at 7.9 per 100,000. Arizona has some of the least restrictive firearms laws in the nation, yet experiences nothing close to the violence seen in Chicago.
It’s past time for Democratic mayors to stop scapegoating the Second Amendment for their violent cities. Gun control is unconstitutional, ineffective, and will do nothing to improve the crime spree devouring Chicago’s most vulnerable.
Published in Guns, Policing
I know it’s Vox, but they don’t always have terrible articles. I read this today and found it interesting.
Am I remembering right? Wasn’t our President from Chicago? Why go with someone like Rick Perry with his record of acheivement when we see all the accomplishment the One left behind?
I wholeheartedly believe that law enforcement personnel should be permanently focused upon gun control … on the black market.
Rahm’s not going to let an opportunity like this go by, one that allows more gun control laws, and ultimately, more murders, since the citizens can’t defend themselves.
Then he’ll get re-elected on a “we need even MORE gun control laws now” platform, and he’ll be escorted to and from home by armed security every day.
My conclusion is Rahm really hates black people, otherwise he would not be pursuing policies that get so many of them killed. (Alternatively, he hates everyone and the deaths of so many blacks is just a statistical result of the demographics of Chicago.)
Seawriter
I post this infographic a lot, but it is just that relevant to so many discussions about so many trends happening right now, including the recent increase in violent crime after decades of violent crime trending downwards:
Violent crime is primarily a pastime of people aged 15 to 29.
When you’ve got a bulge of people in that age range, you are going to have more violent crime.
Jon,
This is without question on the doorstep of the National Main Stream Media. This statistic has been available for years. The local news casts, quite professional in Chicago, carry story after story after story. The National Mainstream Media won’t report this. Community group after community group cry out for relief from this madness but there is nothing. The politically correct can not acknowledge that the horror exists much less do anything about it.
Just unbelievable. While Obama was posturing over the trial of George Zimmerman, 30 some people were shot in Chicago over one weekend. Among them a 5 year old boy who’s mother had taken him to a public park swing set at noon, was shot at random by drive-by gang-bangers and died. Just unbelievable.
Regards,
Jim
Of men age 15 to 29, testosterone is a bitch.
Someone needs to stand up a really challenge Rahm.
“Mr. Mayor, if you honestly believe that the problem here is illegal guns, then let’s go. You get the warrants and you lead the charge into the predominantly black south side neighborhoods that are suffering the most.
“You walk the beat at 3am. You stop the young black men hanging out in areas they have no business being at at that time of the morning.
“But you won’t. Because you haven’t got the male appendages and the political guts. Your liberal support would fold on you like a cheap lawn chair. Until then, stop blaming inanimate objects. Start looking at 60 years of liberal policies. Look at what New York was under Guliani. Your problem is in the mirror, not the Constitution.”
Right. Because women’s prisons aren’t a thing.
While it’s true that the number of violent women is smaller than the number of violent men, the majority of women who are violent are still within the 15 to 29 range.
In 2011, about 20% of all those arrested for violent crimes were women. If you have more women in that age range, you are going to see an increase in the number of violent women, because it’s now 20% of a larger pool of offenders.
Interesting. But at best it explains why black on black crime goes unsolved, not why it happens.
And then there’s this nonsense:
Apart from the liberal canard about society being responsible for the crime of an individual, we see also that a 22-year old murderer can have been neglected for “generations.” Or maybe the author had 75-year old murderers in mind.
Anyway, Mike, you are right, it does have some interesting points that I had not considered, and I appreciate your bringing it to our attention.
EJ,
This is the clown who knuckled under to a massive pay increase for the Chicago teachers union. They have one of the worst school systems in the country. Chicago is going broke. Emmanuel the tough guy turned into a manipulative doormat.
This isn’t about gun control and it isn’t about social science statistics. This is about shutting down the crime with whatever it takes. Emmanuel will never do it. Chicago desperately needs a Rudy. Where can it get one?
Regards,
Jim
The people of Chicago (like all of us) have what they have because they vote the way they vote.
They will never, ever, ever, ever vote for a Republican. They won’t get off their half moons to band together and primary a weak alderman or state rep (although in truth bucking the system is not undertaken lightly or without fear for one’s safety). Voting districts are drawn in such a way that politicians choose their constituents, not the other way around.
Business doesn’t care as long as they have their Chinaman* to carry their water for them and make sure they get their tax breaks and their projects go through.
Why should Emmanuel, or any of them, change as long as they have their jobs for life, or at any rate until they fall afoul of the Combine** and get fed to the auditors.
*Compliant politician who does the donor’s bidding
**The single party in Illinois. It has a left wing located mostly in Chicago, North Shore, and down state. It has a right wing located mostly in the collar counties of Chicago.
Precisely. There is one form of gun control that indisputably works: stop and frisk. When those who display Black Lives Matter placards on their front lawns begin to clamor for the sort of police procedures that saved thousands African-American and Hispanic lives in New York we will then know they are finally waking up to the problem.
Funny, Pro(re)gressives were demanding we leave Iraq with casualties far less than this.
It seems like about a year ago I read an article claiming that since Rahm Emanuel became mayor, there are far fewer police officers patrolling the most dangerous neighborhoods. They’ve been moved to the wealthier neighborhoods where crime is already fairly low. Can any Chicagoans verify this?
I care so much about the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of the police that I don’t have the time or energy to care about these deaths.
Black Lives Matter
There is lots of good information on what works to reduce crime. Not just stop-and-frisk, but also programs like certain jail time for all parol violations and aggressive prosecution of nuisance misdemeanors like public urination and vandalism enable cities to get control of these communities. Then, when the good people in the neighborhood start to see the police actually doing something beyond driving through in armored vehicles, they start cooperating, and major crimes get solved. I don’t know Chicago, but I’ll bet that the police, prosecutors, and judges are so tied up in PC red tape and union work rules that none of these techniques have a chance of being implemented.
Gun control encourages gun violence. Criminals care about gun control, only because it makes it safer to prey upon their victims.
As Rahm himself once said “Never let a crisis go to waste”, even if it costs countless innocent lives. Just another way to get power.
Or a Scot Walker to pull the plug on the unions.
Has Chicago ever had a stop and frisk policy?
Rahm can release a sex tape with Caitlyn without consequence until the Cubs lose that last game in October.
No.
Try the Chicago Weekend Crime Report. The shooters clearly never had any range time and the victims do not speak to the Pólice.
Nice culture there, Black Lives Matter ?
Only for political purposes. The place is an island unto it’s self and will remain
The problem isn’t crime. It’s how the crime makes the politicians look. That problem can be solved by proposing stupid gun control legislation because the makes the politicians look good. Rahm et al don’t really care about the crime.
It can all be solved with gun control! Just make guns illegal!
No, wait! Let’s pass a law making murder illegal! That’ll stop ’em!
If someone carries a gun or murders someone, they’ll be breaking the law, and that will be illegal! It’s brilliant!
There’s a long, long post that’s been fermenting in the back of my brain on this topic, tying progressivism’s demand for more gun control to Rousseau’s idea’s on the natural state of man. In the minds of a progressive, guns are bad because they exist to keep man away from his “natural state” in nature (i.e. Lion Chow). Bows, arrows, etc, are “natural” and good, guns (especially them eviillll “assault weapons”) are creations of an industrial society, and therefore bad.
The current anti-knife hysteria in Britain does throw some cold water onto this theory, I’ll admit, as there are few things more primitive than a sharp edge, but I still think there’s something in the technological nature of a gun that drives the left bonkers.
The Mayor and the Police Chief of Chicago might want to spend some time with the Portland Police Bureau’s Gun Task Force. Oregon is a shall issue State for Concealed Handgun Licenses. That does not deter the PPB from going after felons or juveniles that carry handguns and Portland prosecutes them.