When you lock up violent criminals, you prevent them from victimizing other innocents. Crime in America dipped almost 50% after America abandoned “soft on crime” attitudes of the 1970s. Of course, many soft-on-crime politicians like Reitz have once more taken a love to “diversion” programs. And that’s how we get Robbie Patton (above), a local crime celebrity of sorts.
In 2015, he had an altercation at a Champaign Steak ‘n Shake restaurant commonly frequented by my friends and me. While none of us were enjoying a milkshake or steakburger at 5:30pm, Robbie was.
Robbie found himself in an altercation inside the restaurant. He felt one of his friends had been “disrespected”, so little Robbie went outside. He waited for the other group to emerge, pulled out of gun and tried to kill those other people.
He missed, and fled the scene with an Illinois State Trooper in hot pursuit. After a short, high-speed chase in a stolen car, Robbie crashed and escaped on foot.
Cops caught up with him. Local prosecutor Julia Reitz then went soft on little Robbie. She let him go to “boot camp”, even though that sentencing option is not supposed to be available for violent offenders. And squeezing off a bunch of shots at other people, trying to kill them, pretty much fits the bill as a violent crime.
After serving eight months on an eight-year sentence, Robbie returned to the streets of Champaign-Urbana. In less than two days, cops arrested him again for drugs and who knows what else. Not even three weeks after that, he’s illegally got a gun. When someone “disrespects” another one of Robbie’s friends, guess what he does? He pulls out the gun and fires shots at those he believes responsible.
He misses his intended targets, but in the busy University of Illinois campustown district, his errant, not-so-late-night rounds found four innocent people within a block or two. George Korchev, the recent nursing school graduate due to start his career as a registered nurse at a hospital in Libertyville, IL, the following Monday morning, was struck and killed a block away from one of Robbie’s bullets.
Julia Reitz, pictured above, didn’t throw the book at a young punk who tried to commit murder. She instead “celebrated” with a diversion sentence and because of it, George Korchev died.
George Korchev was set to start a life as a productive citizen, helping to save lives. He would have gotten married, had kids and raised a productive family. George would have given his parents grandchildren. He would have lived probably sixty more years, contributing positive energy to making our world a better place.
But Democrat State’s Attorney Julia Reitz cut a deal to let Robbie Patton, a sociopathic predator who will never contribute anything but sewage and sadness to our society, avoid serving hard time for attempted murder.
It’s true. Bad guys in prison don’t victimize the innocent. Florida had proven success with 10-20-Life sentencing enhancements for the use of a firearm while committing a violent crime. A court struck down the law in 2016. Under the law, Florida’s firearm violent crime rate plummeted to the lowest levels in the Sunshine State’s recorded history.
Nibbling around the edges won’t bring crime down. Dangling gun control out to people who don’t know better will not solve violent crime, either. And not only will gun control not solve the gang violence problem, but it will make more innocent victims as criminals don’t fear unarmed victims.
Sounds like a payday for the Krochev family to me. If Reitz broke protocol to keep this punk out if jail, then she can’t argue that she was just doing her job.
I’m pretty sure prosecutorial immunity applies. Good luck with that.
I sense a great disturbance in The Force. At long last, Pravda on the Potomac is anti-Russian.
I’d read this article myself. Alas, I don’t keep birds.
I really hate to see TTAG devolve into a KKK support site. I’m not being PC. I understand the disparity in crime statistics of black Americans vs. white Americans, Hispanics, etc. There is an issue with the normalization of crime in the black communities of America. That’s a genuine, relevant discussion to have.
What we don’t need in this discussion is an ignorant asshole tarnishing the PotG with the color of racism. To think that comment was smart or pithy in any way is ignorance. I can’t believe a right-thinking human being would make such a comment, let alone in a public forum. Oh…Yeah. This is an anonymous forum. Very brave indeed.
Dana is a hate filled troll who only closes off the “big tent” for Gun Rights with videos like “The Godless Left” for the NRA. Her rabid hyperbole does nothing to invite fence sitters over to protecting the Second Amendment.
I would wrap fish with the paper, but I’m afraid it might taint the fish.
Dana Loesch strikes me as being bright, articulate and tough. I assume that when she selects details of her personal life, for release to word murdering propagandists employed by extremist, left wing rags, she knows what she is doing. It is reminiscent of the tactics used by the current occupant of the white house.
I don’t know what that clown in the picture is wearing, but it looks like he’s getting a haircut.
Fools mock what they do not understand.
Are trigger cranks a thing? Don’t think I’ve ever seen one. Surprised they thought them prevalent enough to incorporate them into this document.
‘…the house that she and her family recently vacated.’
What, no mention of WHY her family recently vacated their house? People driven from their homes because of credible death threats and then they paint them as nuts for keeping guns in the house in case of an intruder? I’m sure they gave Martin Luther King Jr. the same treatment, I suppose…
I would bet a rather large sum that both rule 2(never let the muzzle cover..) and 3(keep your finger off the trigger…) were violated here.
Muzzleloader or full auto, the 4 rules of gun safety are the same. The fact that so few know and/or abide by them doesn’t change that.
Her adult supervision was apparently not doing his or her job.
I heavily invested in 9mm. I have more primers, brass and 115 bullets than I care to count. If I can build a 9mm 1911, this has possibilities.
I have a habit of confining my fire arms to as few calibers as I need.
So far everything in my safe, both rifle and pistol is either:
9mm NATO
5.56mm NATO
7.62 NATO
Skip to the 12:15 or min mark on that first video.
Binary, yes.
Bumpfire, no.
No.
Unless they’re banned.
DW is a puzzlement to me. Like with Browning shotguns, why should I be paying premium for and American name on a foreign-built product? I don’t buy Bell and Howell lanterns and flashlights, either.
Are DW firearms really worth the coin?
Patton looks like a candidate for a ballistics test, particularly the .65 Vander
Indianapolis is like any other big city in the US… it’s an overpriced shithole, but the reason it’s 150 murders last year and not 700 is because CCW’s are shall issue. If you had that in Chicago or Baltimore or San Fransisco, violent crime and murders would probably be halved.
Nothing stops crime faster than possibly getting your brains blown out as a punishment from doing a violent crime.
A non-functional device looks a lot like a device saying it’s safe to shoot. Reliance on this thing could, ironically, make you more prone to having an accident.
This reminds me of a case in Michigan, when a young thug, Nathaniel Abraham, who had been incorrigible for most of his young life, murdered a man leaving a party store. The judge, in his case, gave “poor little” Nathaniel Abraham a “blended sentence” as a juvenile. The stipulation of this sentence was, that if he “stayed out of trouble” while in the juvenile system, he would be released at age 21. “Poor little” Nathaniel Abraham was nothing but trouble in the system; most of the trouble was overlooked by officials. To add insult to injury, the state was planning to give him a “free ride” (free college education) until a public outcry forced the state to rescind the offer. “Poor little” Nathaniel has since “graduated to the adult “University of Corrections” where he is doing time for armed robbery.
I just got the A2 Commander. Worth. Every. Penny. Will be getting the PM-C in .45ACP. I am not articulate enough to use all the superlatives that a Dan Wesson deserves. I will be selling the majority of my 1911″s now. I’m ruined for anything less than the quality and accuracy I experienced from the A2.
Well, no, but I can machine both easily.
You can protect your gun rights much easier with the 2nd Amendment and a mill and a lathe than you can with just the 2nd Amendment.
HO
LEE
$#!+!!
Brings 6 rifles that don’t have optics, but leaves rifles at home that have optics? Yeah ok. What a joke
Meh….it depends if the modular parts are as expensive as a whole new gun. Great for areas that limit the number of firearms you can own but for the US market just buy the gun you want up front, then the next complete gun you want. A short slide config is fine until you want the long slide config and you have to buy a long slide, long barrel, and longer mags. This one ain’t for me.
Good guns at a sane price for what you get.
Mossberg didn’t really do the work behind that magazine design, that would be Mike Davidson’s (of MD Arms) brain child. I’m glad it’s finally on the market.
will that have one cut for an RMR?
I have a good job as a mechanical engineer: I get paid well, I have a flexible schedule, and design cool things that have a positive impact on communities (usually unbeknownst to most folks as my projects operate in the background). But, SHOT show week always makes me a little envious of the folks in the gun business who get to attend such a cool event. Plus, I love visiting Las Vegas. Win-win for those folks.
Smoovbore? So it’s a shotgun, not a rifle. A really small shotgun. That holds a lotta rounds.
For those hummingbird hunts.
Being totally aluminum will pose problems in both extreme cold and extreme hot conditions, I think. Jeremy noted that the aluminum grips on the BRNO pistol were almost too hot to hold during his range session. This looks like it could be even worse.