If you ask Chicago’s powers that be why their gun control-heavy city is plagued by “gun violence” they have a simple answer: it wazzunt me! Chicago’s Mayor, Police Superintendent, City Council members and the rest of the town’s status quo statist apparatus contend that all would be well if they could stop guns from coming into the city from outside of Chicago. As if erecting a police cordon around the city limits would starve The Windy City’s gang bangers of gats and eliminate the firearms-related murderous mayhem Chicago is known for. (Not to give them ideas.) Short of that, they want the rest of the country to adopt their gun control laws. More specifically, the cites, towns and states surrounding Chicago. Which is why . . .
In an unusual lawsuit filed July 7, Bosley and Nance-Holt claim their civil rights have been violated by three suburban governments that they say do not adequately regulate gun shops near the Chicago border. The suit argues that weapons sold at these stores are responsible for too much of the violence that disproportionately afflicts this poor, black corner of Chicago.
The suit is “unusual” in the sense of dumb and doomed. I wonder which gun control organization has put the two Chicago moms up to this PR stunt. Meanwhile, the Washington Post‘s Tom Rowley and the paper’s photo editor do everything in their power to legitimize the effort. For example . . .
Critics say the two mothers are stretching the definition of civil rights too far, and are urging the court to dismiss the case. Either way, the suit is timely: Although Chicago recorded the fewest killings in nearly 50 years in 2013, the homicide rate has since been on the rise, darting up 20 percent in the first half of this year.
More people are getting shot in other cities, as well. Police departments in New York, Washington and Milwaukee, among others, are dealing with more killings this year than last. Criminologists caution against a national explanation, especially because homicide rates have decreased in some cities, including Los Angeles. They say local factors, such as shifting gang dynamics and changes in police stop-and-frisk tactics, probably are a factor.
See how that works? The civil rights suit against surrounding cities attempting to force suburbs to “crack down” on gun dealers may – I say may – be frivolous, but the problem is not! In his effort to exploit the moms for the Post’s ceaseless anti-gun agenda, Rowley completely ignores the central issue. Never once does he mention that the gun stores named in the suit are selling legal products legally, catering to their customers’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms.
Rowley is tying himself up in knots here. On one hand, he argues that Chicago’s firearms-related homicide rate is no biggie. That it’s unrelated to gun store sales and not that bad when seen in context. On the other hand, he’s promoting the civil rights lawsuit as necessary, complete with the usual bloody shirt waving anecdotes. He’s not the only one trying to split the aforementioned baby.
So, although Garry McCarthy, the city’s superintendent of police, does not know the full details of the lawsuit, he welcomes its intent.
“If we were to get gun dealers to be much more stringent in their sales, it would help us enormously,” he said, adding that “short-term fluctuations” in the homicide rate are inevitable until the number of guns coming into the city decreases.
“More guns, more shootings,” he said.
More willful ignorance sold as demonstrable fact, and demonstrable facts cherry-picked (without citation) to cast aspersions on blameless gun store owners.
Together, they blame the three villages, Lyons, Lincolnwood and Riverdale, for what they call a “flood” of guns into the city. On average, police have recovered a gun sold at Chuck’s Gun Shop in Riverdale every day for the past 10 years, McCarthy said. Gun shops in the three villages — together with another store in Indiana — supplied almost a fifth of all firearms found at Chicago crime scenes from 2009 to 2013, according to a report published last year by the mayor’s office.
The villages must clamp down on their shops, the mothers say, by insisting on security cameras, employee background checks and training staff members to detect people buying guns for third parties.
I smell Bloomberg. That’s the exact same “gun dealers’ code” mooted by the billionaire ballistic bully boy’s moribund Mayors Against Illegal Guns back in the day. The funny (peculiar) thing about this lawsuit: the gun dealers named probably already have security cameras and certainly train staff members to detect so-called straw purchases – if only because they know the ATF or anti-gunners are likely to send bogus shoppers into their store to catch a blatant violation.
So what’s the point of all this? To provide an excuse for the civilian disarmament industrial complex to spread anti-gun fear and loathing amongst the general population. Thanks to the Washington Post, mission accomplished. I wonder if the judge will ding the Moms for court costs . . .
[h/t JP]