U.S.A. (Ammoland.com)- We have good news from the Windy City. Emperor Rahm will end his reign as mayor and the number of murders in Chicago was lower this year than last. Given its long history of violence, do Democrat voters even care any longer?
The Trump recovery finally picked Chicago up off its knees. Due to better employment opportunities, a few thousand young men took real jobs rather than joining gangs in Chicago. That economic shift dropped the number of people murdered in Chicago for the second year in a row. Chicago isn’t the city with the highest murder rate in the US, but it is far from a shining jewel in the Socialist crown. You would think this level of public violence would bother Chicago politicians, or at least bother the Democrat voters who keep the pols in office.
Even if the Chicago politicians don’t have a solution to their old string of failures, they are always able to come up with new excuses. Excuses worked for both the politicians and the voters who elected them.. and who keep re-electing them. The Chicago pols blamed guns for the violence in their city.. each month after murderous month.Chicago runs Illinois. To be more precise, Chicago politicians run Illinois politics. Both have been in decline for years. Both city and state are massively in debt and horribly inefficient. High taxes, burdensome regulations, and widespread corruption drive out industry. The resulting high rate of unemployment drives up crime. All that was predictable.
We were told that guns were the source of violence in Chicago. Why was crime so high in Joliet and Chicago while the violent crime rate was so much lower in Palatine or Des Plaines? Was it easy to get guns in North Lawndale but somehow impossible to get firearms in Palatine? If gun control in Illinois worked so well, then why was Illinois still so violent compared to other states? Illinois Democrats don’t want to know.The excuse of blaming guns worked for Democrat voters in Chicago. After all, they voted Democrat so violent crime isn’t their problem to worry about. Did the voters ever stop to ask themselves the simplest of question?
Chicago politicians said that gun-control not only worked, but was essential to public safety. They claimed that Chicago was suffering from the bad gun laws in nearby states. Chicago Democrats never asked themselves why Chicago was so violent, but Fort Wayne and Green Bay were several times safer. They didn’t want to know the answer.
For years Chicago politicians said that guns were the problem and that was why they couldn’t allow concealed carry permits. Oddly enough, the crime rate in Chicago has fallen now that concealed carry came to Illinois. That is consistent with a nationwide report from the American College of Surgeons. The report said concealed carry and permit-less carry didn’t increase murder or violent crime. Gun control was a placebo. That political sugar-pill let Chicago politicians keep innocent victims disarmed for years. The Chicago voters didn’t care.
Unfortunately, it gets crazier than that. Illinois runs a background check every night on every person who has a state license to carry a concealed weapon. When you look closely at the data, people with their concealed carry license are the most law abiding and non-violent class of people on the planet. That means that Illinois state bureaucrats could have searched the police records of anyone else and found more criminals.We were told that we need background checks to stop crime whenever legal gun owners buy guns. Studies published in the Annals of Epidemiology showed that those gun-control laws didn’t reduce rates of murder or suicide. Gun-control was neither safe nor effective. Are we shocked to find out that gang bangers don’t bother with paperwork? What these Illinois gun-control laws were successful at doing was disarming poor people in our inner cities, the same people who are at greatest risk of criminal attack. Despite what they claim, Democrat voters don’t care about the safety of poor people.
That is so important I’m going to say it again. Illinois State law enforcement spent their time investigating the most law abiding group on the planet rather than searching for actual criminals in order to solve crimes and close real cases. Illinois has a deadly problem with drug gangs, but the police spend their nights investigating honest gun owners. We left real criminals on the street in order to meet a political agenda, but Illinois Democrats don’t care.
Politics are real. Voters are supposed to stop political corruption by voting dishonest officials out of office. We have people murdered in Chicago every 15 minutes and Illinois voters can’t be bothered to pay attention.
We’ve seen the deadly results. With a record like that, don’t you dare tell me that Democrat politicians or Democrat voters care about the working class and the poor.
About Rob Morse
The original article is here. Rob Morse writes about gun rights at Ammoland, at Clash Daily, and on his SlowFacts blog. He hosts the Self Defense Gun Stories Podcast and co-hosts the Polite Society Podcast. Rob is an NRA pistol instructor and combat handgun competitor.