There’s more than a bit of the old “prison populations swell even as crime goes down” dissonance in this Bloomberg article:
Chicago Violence Haunts Obama as Gun-Control Backers Left Cold
Chicago’s violence has long burdened Obama’s political career, including the embarrassment of a missed vote as a state senator that hurt his 2000 bid for Congress. Duncan, 44, a Chicago native and Obama friend, admits to “total failure” in curbing violence during his seven years as chief of the nation’s third-largest school system, which serves more than 400,000 students, 85 percent of them living below the poverty line.
Some gun-control advocates question the administration’s timing as (US Education Secretary) Duncan and (US Attorney General) Holder arrive after a highly publicized beating that didn’t involve a gun.
The gist of the article seems to be that the president, as a community organizer and state senator, failed to do enough to prevent violence within his adopted city, and is neglecting once again to do it now that he is president.
But Chicago already has among the strictest gun control laws in the country.
Gun control advocates will no doubt reply that surrounding cities, counties and states have looser controls than does Chicago, permitting the flow of illegal firearms into the Second City’s neighborhoods. Perhaps if the president promoted more sweeping firearm regulations nationally, the well would run dry (although it will be a while I think, before Chicagoans run out of boards with which to bash each other).
But that’s been tried before on a national level: After the Dunblane school massacre in Britain back in 1996, the UK enacted some of the strictest gun control laws in the free world.
Whatever is behind the dreadful rates of violence in Chicago, it seems to have very little to do with local gun control ordinances. One wonders whether, in a city where 85% of the students live below the poverty line, it is not instead a culture of hopeless dependency fostered by a paternalistic welfare state that might be the more proximate cause.
And if so, why on earth would the rest of us want any more of that?
Had there been one, just one, citizen present with a gun when those thugs were beating that young boy to death with wood planks, that kid would be alive today. Period. We might even have had fewer young felons to house and feed for the next few years.
AMEN!
TRUTH!
Tangentially related, the Supreme Court is set to rule next year on Chicago’s gun control law, thereby setting up a decision on whether or not the Second Amendment should be incorporated to apply to the states.
What I find quite interesting is I bet no one will ever question if the 1st Amendment (or 4th, or 5th, etc) applies nationwide, or only in DC.
And these are supposed to be brilliant people. SCOTUS should have send back a handwritten YHGTBJoshingM note, with formal “REJECTED – Because you’re an idiot” stamp on the front of the petition.
An I think I’m missing the point some days….
never mind the lower crime in those neighboring areas with more guns.
never mind John Lott’s research reported in his book “More Guns, Less Crime.”
Police: Minutes away when seconds count.
blackeagle603/
To show you what we’re up against in terms of the mental and argumentative ju jitsu the other side employs in debates on this subject–and the extent to which they are brainwashed into leftist group-think almost totally impervious to the facts–let me regale you with a scene I watched on, I believe, ABC one night in a debate between Lott and his detractors that took place inside–of all places–a HS gym filled w. students during a symposium (supposedly a fact-based, fact friendly institution, right?)
At any rate, after Lott–the only man in the entire world who had the facts, i.e., data from every county in the US which he, and he alone, had bothered to compile–said his piece, the moderator turned to the gun-control advocates (the people who HAD NO facts) who said in a stand-logic-on-its-head statement: “Well that’s just one mans *opinion,* the FACTS ARE……yada, yada, yada,” and proceeded with their screed, substituting/holding out their opinions as certifiable, widely agreed upon, fact instead. And the ABC moderator BOUGHT INTO IT. Then, even worse, when the kids in the audience and their teachers were invited to ask questions, each and every one excoriated and lectured Lott with lefty-inspired takes on the subject with nary a question, as if the facts and public attitudes about guns in society were (in a term we were later to hear ad nauseam in the climate debate) a much agreed upon, “settled,” fact.
So here we had, in the very center of an institution supposedly devoted to the facts and their promulgation, an entire faculty staff and student body
repeating, zombie-like the mantra of the left in a manner that would do the Pod people proud–simultaneously steadfastly ignoring–neigh, speaking with contempt about–those concrete data/facts which were not totally congruent with their ideological template, only lacking the uniforms of the Young Pioneers.
Nevermind……
VX,
It took getting carjacked and driven around TJ at gunpoint for 30 minutes but now my oldest daughter “gets it” and is only truly relaxed at home when her dad is carrying.
For those that can’t reason I’ve found Oleg Volk’s visuals to be most effective — some of his stuff manages to find a path through the right brain into the left.
Whatever is behind the dreadful rates of violence in Chicago, it seems to have very little to do with local gun control ordinances. One wonders whether, in a city where 85% of the students live below the poverty line, it is not instead a culture of hopeless dependency fostered by a paternalistic welfare state that might be the more proximate cause.
Might also have a lot to do with the State’s Attorney not doing they’re jobs, or in the few times that they do and Judge doesn’t do his, it could also be the corruption, or the under staffed police working 2 years now without a contract.
Did I mention the corruption?
Had there been one, just one, citizen present with a gun when those thugs were beating that young boy to death with wood planks, that kid would be alive today.
STEVEC, Sadly, in Crook County anyone smart enough to carry, would have walked away from that scene. Nearly any where else in this county I think you would be right, Crook County isn’t one of them. There may have been CPD near by, but they didn’t enter until backup arrived.
The comment box ate may last link: http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com/2009/10/j-fed-warms-up-bus.html
Lex, Glenn Beck had a Black CEO on his show (I can’t find the video link at the moment, alas) who had been an Army brat and was beaten many times at school in NYC for talking white (a common thing among black Army brats), being intelligent and working hard to achieve his goals. His impoverished mother gave him a plastic briefcase, which classmates destroyed simply because of their own envy and idiocy.
There are a number of black kids that are trapped in that kind of hell hole. The left won’t let them off the plantation, and they hate anyone like Walter Williams, or Thomas Sowell, that escape their clutches. The black CEO laid the much of the blame on welfare.
I’ll keep looking for the link and post it if I find it. Unless, of course, someone else finds it and posts it. The interview really is important and well worth your time to see it.
Quartermaster, you mentioned that the man laid much of the blame on welfare. I recall some early Bill Cosby albums (albums? What are albums?) where being on the welfare was a childhood taunt, in spite of the fact that he mentioned moving from Stewart Street into The Projects which indicates his childhood wasn’t exactly one of beer and skittles.
I sometimes wonder what would happen if Bill Cosby were to be seen as a role model, rather than the rapper or the drug dealer or the basketball player or the dog fighter. Yet I notice when Cosby does speak out he’s raked over the coals by those who claim to wish to better their followers.
God help me, I’d pay *money* to see James Earl Jones as a graduation speaker at some inner-city high school deliver a speech. On talking white.
But, what is eloquence and diction compared to tats and six figures a game making jump shots?
Pro sports, I’m convinced, is the escape mechanism of poor youth. Once they start feeling those aches in the knees, they turn to the lottery. Turning to the books back in junior high would have been a better path, but who wants to listen to a speech about hard work? And as a youth, who doesn’t
think themselves the star center or quarterback and believe their bodies will hold up forever?
– Max
The Chicago Tribune has a story on the front page today about youth violence in Chicago. It’s entitled “Curing a public epidemic”. Here’s a excerpt:
Which to me sounds like self-serving bureaucratic blather from the academics, social workers and politicians who would split up the money to implement this. Or maybe it’s just that when you own a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Someone in charge of providing public services is in favor of providing public services. There’s a surprise. Also – behold! It turns out kids aren’t darling little angels, they’ll whack each other around unless they’re taught not to. They need to be taught impulse control! The fact that this is a surprise to the people providing services ought to disqualify them from being in charge of providing anything to anyone more significant than a burnt out match. I say this as a Boy Scout leader who has been handing out knives, saws and axes to kids of ages 11 to 18 for 17 years, as well as teaching them to build fires, shot .22′s and bows and arrows, etc., etc.
There’s a hint. So, what do we do? Why, we have parenting classes, wherein the State tells us how to be good parents.
I’d like to see these studies, and what data they tossed out and what they kept. But let’s say it’s true. Nobody has a revulsion of the State teaching people how to be parents? How about letting the Churches and other volunteer social institutions do that, as they did until the State started horning in (about the time this kind of thing started going to hell).
Ya THINK? WOW. WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED?
And where are the parents?
The families aren’t whole because our culture has been repeatedly told that motherhood is everything and fatherhood is nothing. It’s been told that marriage is unnecessary or even undesirable and that condemnation of unmarried cohabitation and especially unmarried motherhood is old-fashioned and discriminatory and bigoted. In some sub-cultures in America young men make vast sums of money telling other young men and women that impregnating women and then having nothing to do with providing for them and their mothers is glorious and desirable. Our society has been told that religion is the source of great evil and that it’s moral requirements are unjust. It has been told that the nuclear family is outmoded and that “alternative families” are desirable and should be embraced and made equal to nuclear families.
In short, families are not whole in America because those who are the voice of our society have done everything they can to put a shotgun to the kind of families and the societial institutions that have nurtured them and blown their heads off. The fact that purposeless men turn to drugs and crime is an effect, not a cause, of what’s going on.
Some of these are valuable tools to be used by parents. But they cannot replace them.
Zero-tolerance was always about protecting school officials from parents and lawsuits, not about protecting kids.
God bless people who on a volunteer basis try to help the kids in their community. But what works is 2-parent families raising kids with the support of schools, churches, and local groups like Elks Clubs, Boy and Girl Scouts, etc., etc. No one will care for a kid or support them physically, emotionally and mentally like a man and a woman that are bound to each other and have committed to the community that they will stand by each other and by their kids. Support that with public money and you’ll succeed. Support anything else – like husbandless women having kid after kid from man after man – and you’ll fail.
His impoverished mother gave him a plastic briefcase, which classmates destroyed simply because of their own envy and idiocy.
Do you like seafood? Ever cook live crabs? You put the bushel basket full of clams on the counter, heat up the water in the pot, and then grab a crab with the tongs and pick him up.
What happens? The other crabs grab him and pull him back down. It’s the crab effect. That’s what this is. Someone trying to get ahead delegitimatizes their chosen life path, so they destroy him. The kid’s lucky that they only broke his briefcase and not his skull.
As strong a supporter as I am of the Second Amendment, I think this is a case for the Tenth Amendment.
Although the 2nd does not explicitly say “Congress shall make no law”, this seems to be a clear restriction on federal restriction of firearms. If we wish the several states to be able to set their own taxes, abortion laws, and zoning laws as they see fit, if we wish tSalt Lake City to be Salt Lake City and San Francisco to be San Francisco, then we must not interfere with Chicago’s laws, however stupid we may see them.
Plus, regarding Chicago’s crime due to the gun bans and welfare state? We should not interrupt our adversary when he is making a mistake, especially when he is making a mistake that allows us to use his failure as an example to the rest of the nation.
SAM, there is another angle to consider. If my wedding in South Dakota is to be honored in Illinois (and why the state of Illinois might have different standards when it comes to marriage is a different matter, but state soverignity is the topic here), and my South Dakota drivers license allows me to drive in all 50 states no matter their requirements, plus if my vehicle registered in South Dakota can drive in California without meeting their smog laws or vehicle inspections, and if the powers of the federal government to regulate commerce between the states means the Fed has the power to regulate these differences, then at some point we have to decide what one state decrees that another state is bound to honor.
As I mention, in some respects the Fed trumps local law. I can drive a soot-belching diesel pickup into California and there’s not a darned thing any tree-hugging vegetarian bicyclist there can say about it. On the other hand, once I cross the state line into Iowa I go from trusted citizen with a permit to carry a concealed weapon into a felon if caught. Likewise, Adam and Steve have no marriage here, but in other states they do.
With regards to the 2nd, it specifically mentions the militia, which at the time was supplied by and officers appointed by the states, the unregulated militia being down into the county and township level but under command of state-appointed officers in the chain of command. With the Dick Act the National Guard was incorporated into the chain of command. None of this changes the fact that though the states are supposed to regulate and supply the militia there is nothing that forces them to do so, hence militia typically brought their own arms and ammunition, and the Fed has no rights at all regarding the militia unless they are pressed into government service.
Thus I think the states can regulate firearms as they see fit, but there will be friction if they do so such that they infringe upon the Fed’s ability to raise an army. Likewise, cities can do as they see fit until they infringe upon the ability of the state to raise a militia. And I’m not a lawyer, but I’m reading that “shall not be infringed” part of the 2nd to mean that the state ability to have a militia is over the city’s right to deny those men and weapons, and the Fed’s right to tell a state to not form a militia is lesser than the state’s right to form a militia as they see fit.
And I’m looking at the part in the Declaration of Independence that declares all men created equal, having a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and I’m thinking that’s a declaration of human rights and By God if I’ve a right to life that exists independent of federal or state government then that right is to be defended in spite of any limitations those entities might wish to place upon it.
My life. Granted to me by My Creator, declared as self-evident. I can defend it with a gun, sword, harsh language or even a sharp stick, this is the fundamental basis of self-defense being sacrosanct.
But then, if I were a constitutional lawyer I’d be arguing about redistribution of wealth or something rather than attempting to settle law that our Civil War ensured is heavy on the Federal wishes.
– Max
See, I think you all have the wrong handle on why the militia is mentioned in the 2nd Amendment. The Constitution provided for Federally-funded State militias – with officers picked out by the States, mind you, even though the Feds pay for them – because there was no way to get around the necessary evil of a Federal standing army. So the States were given Fed-paid militias so that the States could defend themselves against the Feds if they had to.
But that just kicks the can down the road. Now the States have standing armies (or readily accessible ones) that in turn can be used to oppress the people. I read the 2nd Amendment as “Since assuring the ability of the States to defend themselves against a Federal government necessitates the necessary evil of a well-trained State army, individuals must be able to have unrestricted access to arms so that they can in turn defend themselves against the State.”
I have to agree with Randy K. Our self-defense laws have become so convoluted by anti-gun politicians that I wouldn’t know if I COULD help the boy legally. As it would be my freedom, assets and career on the line, I would have to think twice about getting involved. I still keep remembering the store owner in New York City a few weeks ago. I also remember the pizza shop owner in Chicago a few years ago. First thing to consider is that I would have been in no physical danger. Second, according to the accounts I have heard, none of the attackers had a gun. Another thing to consider is that this was Black on Black, me being White I would lose either way. Wasn’t Chicago where a man who hit a Black child with his van, was dragged out of it and beaten to death a few years ago? I hate to have to take these things into consideration, but if I don’t, who will? I am not concerned about my physical safety, but I do have responsibilities to my family, that I can’t fullfill if I am locked up in a cell.
Several years ago a friend of mine was leaving work, when he saw one of the secretaries being dragged into a car by her hair. He went to his car, grabbed his gun, and held the man at gun point until the Police arived. The next day he was fired from his job for violating the policy banning guns from company property. The guy dragging the secretary was her husband and she declined to press charges against him. To add insult to injury, my friend was fined $250 because his CCP was expired and the Police refused to return his weapon and supposedly had it destroyed.