With Chicago nudging 500 homicides for the year, locals have plenty of reasons to tool up. Increasingly, the law-abiding there are choosing to wander off Mayor Rahm’s gun control plantation. Instead of blaming guns for the city’s violence, these people are buying guns to protect themselves and their loved ones. What’s more, the numbers of African-American women applying for carry licenses has exploded.
It should come as no surprise. Five years ago, less than one-third of African-American families took a positive view of gun ownership. Today, nearly 60% not only recognize the benefits of gun ownership, but consider it a “necessity” according to the New York Times report of a Pew study. Nationally, the numbers of African-American women seeking concealed carry licenses nationwide has grown sharply.
For generations, Chicago’s strict gun control served to disarm most of the good guys who live there. Today, the nation watches the violence increase on a daily basis on Rahm’s streets. Chicago Justice was a sick joke. Cook County’s catch and release criminal justice system fails to keep (or never puts) bad guys behind bars. At the same time, gang violence permeates far too much of the city. Locals know gangs run the streets with impunity.
Meanwhile, the city’s cops identify suspects in less than 13% of homicides, so people know that plenty of killers still prowl the streets. In response to the failure of the mayor’s anti-gun policies, more and more of Chicago’s residents — black women in particular — have chosen to empower themselves with concealed carry.
These ladies enjoy the security that concealed carry provides. They understand how the only thing that stops a bad person with evil in their hearts is a good guy with a gun.
I’ve met them personally in our Guns Save Life’s Windy City meetings. In fact, our Chicagoland Regional Director Alfreda Keith Keller (above, right) stands as a shining example. She’s lived life well and come to embrace gun ownership to help keep her safe in a city that is less so.
Today, she exemplifies empowerment and self-determination for all. The Chicago Sun-Times even published a feature on her work, calling her, shockingly, “A delightful advocate for legal, responsibly owned guns.”
Make no mistake, Alfreda is not alone. Carry licenses issued to African-American women have exploded. More significantly, the mainstream media have actually reported on this trend.
The Chicago Tribune has the story:
Safety concerns spur more black women in Chicago to receive concealed-carry gun permits
At first glance, nothing differentiates Vernetta Robinzine from passers-by in the Beverly neighborhood on Chicago’s Far South Side. On a recent evening, like most people on a workday, she donned business casual attire with a loose, bright blouse. But her daily wardrobe includes something unseen that gives her confidence.
Robinzine, 51, is a gun owner with a concealed carry license. Since she received her permit in late spring, she carries her firearm wherever she goes.
“It’s like a part of me now,” Robinzine said with the smile.
Data show Robinzine is part of a burgeoning group in Cook County: black women obtaining concealed carry permits. Since Illinois began issuing licenses in 2014, the number of African-American women receiving a permit in Cook County has grown every year.
About 800 black women got a license in 2014, according to Illinois State Police. So far in 2017, nearly 1,400 black women have received a concealed carry permit — already more than all of 2016. In all, more than 4,000 black women have received a concealed carry license in Cook County.
The People of the Gun welcome African-American men, women and everyone else to the ranks of gun ownership. The good people of Chicago don’t deserve to suffer under the effects of generations of bad government and a failed gun control agenda.
While, thanks to favorable court decisions, much of Chicago’s gun control laws are no longer in force, it takes time to overcome learned biases against gun ownership. Everyone from the NRA at the national level to Guns Save Life at the local level work together every day to help show Chicagoans of all stripes that there’s a path off the gun control plantation.