Tuesday, June 21, 2016

The Free Fire Zone Called Chicago

The states, we all believe, are laboratories for democracy. We owe the concept to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. In the case of New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann he suggested that “state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."

If a state can serve as a laboratory, so too can a city. The citizens can choose to try out a new policy in a city, the better to see how it works. Take gun control. Democrats have been screaming with the fervor of true believers, that gun control will solve the problem of gun crime and terrorism and just about everything else.

But, we have a splendid example of gun control in the city of Chicago, Illinois. Not only that, but Chicago is being ruled by one Rahm Emanuel, a refugee from by the Obama administration. So we have a liberal Democrat running a city with very strict gun control laws.

How’s that working out?

Last weekend, we did not hear much about the gun violence in Chicago. The nation was transfixed on events in Orlando. Besides, gun violence has become so common in Chicago that pointing it out feels redundant. Moreover, gun violence in Chicago does not fit into any of the narratives being preached in the Church of the Liberal Pieties. It is not about white privilege. It is not about white police officers killing unarmed black teenagers. It is not being directed by Republicans. Apparently, when the crime is black-on-black, black lives do not matter quite as much.

The Chicago Tribune offers the grim statistics for gun violence over the Father’s Day weekend:

The city recorded its 300th homicide this weekend and went on to record six others over a 60-hour period that saw 55 people shot, 13 fatally, from Friday afternoon through early Monday morning.

So far this year, about 1,800 people have been shot across the city and more than 200 of those wounded have died of their wounds, according to records kept by the Chicago Tribune. A total of 306 people have been killed this year by shooting, stabbing or other means, Tribune records show.

A 3-year-old boy was among the wounded who survived the weekend shootings. Police said he’s in critical condition. The boy was shot in the right shoulder near East 61st Street and South Kimbark Avenue in the Woodlawn neighborhood at 6:15 p.m. Sunday, police said. The boy was in a car seat when an unknown attacker fired shots at the car, police said. People in the vehicle managed to get the boy to University of Chicago Medical Center. He was then transferred to Comer Children's Hospital in critical condition.

Five people were fatally shot and nine others were hurt between Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. Four of the fatalities occurred in seven hours. The fatalities included a 16-year-old boy who was killed in West Englewood about 9:05 p.m. Friday. He was in the front passenger seat of a car driving through an alley in the 6500 block of South Hamilton Avenue when two males came up and fired shots, according to police.

At least 28 people were wounded, three fatally, in shootings from 8:30 a.m. Saturday to 4:30 a.m. Sunday, the equivalent of somebody shot every 43 minutes. One fatal shooting occurred during a possible murder-suicide in Hyde Park about 9:50 a.m. Saturday, police said. Police responded to the 1400 block of East 54th Street for a well-being check and found a 65-year-old woman with a gunshot wound to the head. A man, 73, also was found shot in the head.

Five more people were killed and seven others, including the 3-year-old boy, were wounded from Sunday afternoon to early Monday. One of the fatalities Sunday was a 21-year-old man shot with “possibly an AK-47’’ assault rifle in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, according to police. Police intially said the victim was 17. The 21-year-old, who the Cook County medical examiner's office said was Salvador Suarez, was walking east in the 1700 block of West 46th Street around 1:30 p.m. when a light-colored, four-door Saturn pulled up and fired shots with a "high-powered semi-automatic weapon," striking the victim as he attempted to run, said Eugene Roy, chief of detectives for the Chicago police.

Suarez lived in the 4500 block of South Hermitage Avenue, according to the medical examiner's office. Police are investigating whether the rifle has been used in any other shootings. The victim was pronounced dead on the scene, and the shooting was believed to be gang related, Roy said.

If you do not live in Chicago, you have probably not heard about any of this. If you are a gun control advocate you will reply that the problem with gun violence in Chicago lies outside of the city, in places where it is easier to acquire guns. Because all of the gang bangers have to go outside of the city to find an AK-47.

As I said before, the logic is unimpeachable: if no one in Chicago had a gun there would be no gun violence in Chicago.

Unimpeachable, but thoroughly irrelevant.

4 comments:

Ares Olympus said...

Grim. I saw that report yesterday of the 300th murder in Chicago.

OTOH, there were 900+ murders in the early 1990s. This article shows a downtrend through 2011
https://propagandaprofessor.net/tag/mcdonald-vs-chicago/

And this one shows 2012 as a high of 500 although 2016 might beat that at this rate.
http://www.chicagonow.com/getting-real/2015/03/chicago-crime-rate-there-really-has-been-a-dramatic-decline/

I remember more than a decade ago people were talking about a high speed rail line between Chicago and the Twin Cities, and the biggest objection was that it would make it easier to export violent crimes from Chicago.

Perhaps Trump's wall idea isn't so bad. We need to keep out the rapists and murderers, but apparently to do this we have to put walls around poor neighborhoods and not let anyone out until we "know what's going on" as Trump says.

Maybe we could put all the illegals and refugees inside the same walled cities too, and them all sort it out. Trump needs to get on the ball with these proposals!

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

Illinois was the last state in the Union to allow for concealed carry. After years and years of baloney excuses and political wrangling in one of the most Democrat-infested (and corrupt) states in the country, they passed it in 2013. After all that nonsense, they settled on "shall issue." What was the hubbub? Who knows. People are scared of mechanical devices that can't do anything without an operator. You know, like stoves and hand mixers. If you know and understand firearms, you have a different view. Once you've taken your gun apart for a "white glove" cleaning -- a full breakdown/strip -- you realize you are dealing with a mechanical device, with precision-machined metal, springs, screws, detents, etc. It's a device. It does not act on its own.

The people most for gun control live in a fantasy world where their ideas don't work, but they wish they did. And they believe their intentions and wishes are enough. Those are dangerous people.

Now the Democrats want to use a mass slaughter of one of their most loyal constituent groups to push an agenda that blames a machine, but does not dare mention anything about the shooter's ideology, lest it tarnish the "religion of peace." We are entering a new phase in America, where there is the distinct possibility a coordinated ideological guerrilla war could be unleashed on our soil, through random events bent on killing as many infidel Americans as possible. They will use our precious freedoms and liberties to infiltrate us, stage their operations, and destroy as many lives as possible. The perpetrators are so fanatical, that they're willing to kill/detonate themselves, or go down in a blaze of glory for [REDACTED RELIGIOUS REFERENCE], and his Prophet. If Mateen and Farouk are harbingers of something that's coming, we're going to have to rethink a lot of things.

I would ask my fellow citizens to look to the gun not as the cause of our problem, but the instrument we can use to protect ourselves and create the possibility of limiting the impact of these shootings by killing the shooter before he can kill more. In short, it's time for us to grow up and recognize the reality of the problem. This includes a rethinking of the right of a sober person to carry inside a bar or nightclub. The blood-alcohol level (BAL) permitted with concealed carry in Michigan is .02, which is less than one beer. If you're caught with a concealed weapon and more than 0.02 BAL, you lose your Concealed Pistol License forever. Seems sensible to me.

Ares Olympus said...

Stuart: As I said before, the logic is unimpeachable: if no one in Chicago had a gun there would be no gun violence in Chicago. Unimpeachable, but thoroughly irrelevant.

Here's a more recent article from "Chicago Now" acknowledging that guns laws alone don't keep guns from criminals.

http://www.chicagonow.com/politics-now/2016/06/who-needs-facts-when-you-have-ideology/
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On the left side of things, there is a wholesale disregard of facts. Look no further than the ongoing gun debate for disregard of facts. We awaken this morning to the news that so far this year, about 1,780 people have been shot across Chicago.

First, we do need a good gun policy in the USA and contrary to what the left says, we do have a lot of gun laws on the books. For instance, felons may not own guns. Tell that to the street gangs in Chicago and other major cities.

It is against the law for those who are legal to buy guns and resell them to felons. In Illinois, one must have a gun owner’s registration permit to be in possession of a firearm.

We now come to the first week in summer of 2016 and the US Senate is getting ready to vote on gun legislation everyone knows will fail.

The fact the left ignores now is regardless of what laws we write, criminals are still going to have guns. It will not make it harder for them to get guns because they buy their guns off the street. They are stolen guns, or guns that have been obtained illegally.

The left does not want to confront the murder problem in the USA. They don’t want to acknowledge the gang problem, that the war on drugs has been lost and if we want to give the drug cartels a bad day, legalize and control Marijuana, and Hash which are like the beer and wine sales of the drug trade.
...
With regard to the news of 1,780 deaths in Chicago this year, an African-American friend on social media said to me today, “Black lives don’t matter.” A white friend said, “all lives don’t matter.”

This stuck with me because it is an example of the point above.

White society in America seems to want to ignore the African-American belief that their lives don’t matter. Facts substantiate their belief, yet White America steadfastly ignores their anguish.

You can bet if it was 1,780 white victims from Lincoln Park and The Gold Coast who had been killed, the National Guard would be patrolling the streets of Chicago and the Police would be kicking in doors of gang headquarters.

That is not happening, so facts support the African-American view.

As social animals, we find safety in groups, but there is no safety for us in political groups.

Our herd mentality is being used to our detriment, and we need to think on our own, make our own decisions based on facts.

It appears with all the information available in The Information Age, the problem is getting worse. Now, we can surf the news and find that news which reaffirms our bias, or our hate.

Rather than use our skills for analysis and fact gathering, even more troubling, we can eschew facts to cling to our social/political identities even when they turn hateful.
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Anonymous said...

“state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."

if its citizens choose?

so, what does it means? White majority was right to experiment with 'segregation' in the South?

does it mean a city or the state can experiment with banning 'hate speech' if the majority want it?

doesn't that violate the constitution?

and what do people want? people don't own most of the media. people are manipulated into wanting something by the oligarchs.

look at 'gay marriage'. people were manipulated to want it.