The rabidly anti-gun International Association of Chiefs of Police rolled into Chicago this past weekend to hold its annual convention at McCormick Place. With the bloodstained streets of the South Side as a backdrop, the Chiefs attacked lawful gun owners, vilified the NRA, and called for the end of civilian firearm ownership as we know it.
As one would expect, Chicago’s cartoon-character police superintendent Garry McCarthy delivered the welcoming address to those in attendance. While doing so, McCarthy made clear his fervent belief that the state’s lawful firearm owners were at the root of Chicago’s violent crime problem. McCarthy emphatically asserted that regular citizens, such as dentists, lawyers and accountants living in Naperville, must be relieved of their firearms so that drug lords in Chicago will stop shooting one another. One need not have a very cynical eye to recognize that McCarthy’s fixation on civilian disarmament serves as a mere distraction from the real problem – woeful mismanagement of Chicago’s police department.
For many years, the Chicago Police Department’s Detective Bureau published an annual report analyzing numerous factors impacting the city’s homicide rate. Publication of the homicide report was an unusually transparent endeavor for a Chicago governmental agency. Available to the general public, the homicide report chronicled the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Chicago Police Department’s crime fighting efforts. The report also provided facts to support effective rebuttals to assertions made by the gun control movement. Publication of the annual homicide report ceased after the 2011 edition. Coincidently, 2011 was the year that Gerry McCarthy became the Chicago Police Department’s Superintendent.
Tidbits taken from the 2011 Chicago Murder Analysis paint a picture that does little to support disarming law-abiding Illinois citizens:
- Chicago has 25 police precincts – 8 of them account for about 67% of the murders committed in 2011
- A full 68% of Chicago’s murders in 2011 happened in streets or alleyways
- In 1991, 67% of the murders that year resulted in arrest and prosecution. In 2011, only 30% of the murders committed that year resulted in arrest and prosecution
- Of the 312 murders committed in Chicago in 2011 where a motive could be determined, 51% were incidental to gang or narcotics activities
- Of the 433 people murdered in Chicago in 2011, 75.3% were Black, 18.9% were Hispanic, 4.6% White, and 1.4% Asian or other race
- In instances where the race of murder offenders could be determined, 70.5% were Black, 24.3 were Hispanic and 3.5% were White
- 77% of Chicago’s murder victims in 2011 had previous arrest records
- 87.3% of murder offenders in 2011 had previous arrest records
- Of the 433 murders occurring in Chicago in 2011, 362 were committed with a firearm – 351 utilizing a handgun; 1 utilizing a rifle; 5 utilizing a shotgun and; 5 of unknown type
- 42% of murders take place between 10:00 PM and 7:00 AM
Based on Chicago’s 2011 murder statistics, there’s a good chance that you’ll either commit a murder or become a victim of a murder if you are a young adult male night-owl gang member with a previous criminal record who hangs out on the streets of certain police precincts. Otherwise, you’ll probably live a long and uneventful life. But, if you do get killed in Chicago, there’s a 70% chance that the person who killed you will never face justice.
Of course, these statistics are from 2011 and, since these statistics are no longer published, we have absolutely no idea if the McCarthy regime has at all quelled the criminal blood lust on Chicago’s south and west sides. Yet, we suspect things haven’t gotten any better since McCarthy took office.
One thing that hasn’t changed since 2011 is the abject hatred Chicago officials hold for lawful gun owners. The post-Daley years have seen no let-up in the city’s concerted effort to eliminate private firearm ownership. Their very own facts notwithstanding, Chicago city officials lay the blame for criminal and gangland violence on law-abiding citizens who wish to do nothing more than exercise their constitutional rights free of interference from sawed-off dictators like Rahm Emanuel.
Joining McCarthy in last week’s orgy of gun hatred was Barack Obama. In his address to the Chiefs, Obama cynically tried to allay the fears of gun owners by saying that he was not going to take anyone’s guns away. However, in his next breath, Obama pushed the Chiefs to support legislation that would ban better than 80% of the firearms now in civilian hands.
When on friendly turf such as the Chiefs’ convention, gun grabbers like McCarthy and Obama lose their inhibitions and speak freely of their plans to punish citizens who dare to own firearms. After listening to the addresses made at the Chiefs, it should be clear to all gun owners that Obama and his ilk have no respect for our Constitution and the liberties it is designed to protect.
As a gun owner, the only way to survive is for you want to keep your guns more than the gun-grabbers want to take them away. That means that all gun owners will have to put more effort into protecting the 2nd Amendment – at all levels – than the gun-haters put into destroying our heritage. Only you can protect your gun rights. So, get involved, get vocal, get in the faces of the gun controllers. Force them to back down – force them to abandon their morally-bankrupt campaign for domestic disarmament.
