In the video above, Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn reacts to last weekend’s “gun violence.” He points out that all the perps arrested for firearms-related crimes had extensive criminal records, and connects the dots to Wisconsin’s revolving door criminal justice system. And then . . .
Chief Flynn acknowledges that the court’s lack of resolve leads criminals to make a perfectly rational calculation:
Criminals want to have that gun ’cause they face an uncertain but light sanction if the police catch them, but if they’re caught by another criminal they’re likely to get shot.
The Chief’s answer to “gun violence”: increase/enforce the legal penalties of illegal gun use.
To which I’ll add: human nature being what it is, trying to prevent someone from obtaining a gun who risks their life by NOT having a gun is a fool’s errand. Which is as good a description of gun control as I can muster.
You say “human nature”, but the prog’s are trying evolve that out of people. The “modern enlightened man” has no nature. He slavishly obeys the laws established by his betters. One day we may be tempted to label “human nature” as “criminal nature”.
Generally speaking, the vast majority of citizens have always followed the laws while criminals ignore the laws. Of course, that statement applies to common sense laws. That is what we are lacking. Common Sense. The left has been breeding that out of the equation for over 50 years.
Just as the death penalty has never stopped a criminal from committing a major crime, no law on the books will stop them from getting and using guns. Criminals prey on good people. They are rabid dogs which contribute nothing to society. That’s one place where the death penalty got it right… THAT criminal will never hurt another human being. The system just needs to be streamlined.
I agree with harsher laws regarding the illegal use of firearms. The other side of the coin is that we must allow the good people the ability to defend themselves.
Some years ago, the gun collection my father inherited was stolen. Recently one of them turned up in a drug bust, along with 168 other stolen weapons in the possession of one person. In the facility where we viewed the firearms there were recovered safes with doors pried open, torched, Guns are the currency of the drug trade.
Probably a good idea to think hard about what constitutes “crime” and how easily everything can be made “illegal.” Actions that lethally threaten or actually harm other people (murder, assault, rape, theft, fraud) are mala en se, or wrong in and of themselves, no matter what the “law” reads. Just about everything else is just somebody’s opinion… and the “laws” are simply prohibitions used to benefit the state.
+1
You’re right. Guns should only be considered an aggravating circumstance for violent or potentially violent crime. (Burglary of a home is inherently violent, but may not involve any actual or threatened violence).
Can’t wait till your kids are addicted or OD because some drug dealer you think was committing a victimless crime.
DRUG DEALERS SHOULD BE SHOT ON SITE.
There is no need to be an ass because people think that firearm enhancements shouldn’t be slapped on to every crime.
How do you know that the death penalty has never prevented a major crime?
How could you know? You’d have to have a would-be major criminal come out and confess that he would have committed that treasonist act or particular type of homicide, but decided against it because of the death penalty.
Absent that spontaneous confession, all you have are crimes that never happen, which is proof of nothing either way.
You may be right that it can not be proved that the death penalty ever prevented a major crime, but the fact that we still have violent crime proves that it does not prevent crime in general. The same can bed said for any punishment. Justice is often confused and sometimes aligns with revenge, which I’m not saying is a bad thing. As far as preventing crime in a country were you are innocent until proven guilty, the best way is to just remove violent people from society permanent. Then they can’t wash and repeat their crimes.
The death penalty does deter crime, just not all crime. Just because deterrence isn’t a 100% doesn’t mean it’s 0%.
There is a specific person alive today (I’m guessing they’re still alive) because I didn’t murder them because murder was illegal and I would be punished.
I’m also pretty sure there would be much more brawling, theft, and unpaid taxes if deterrence didn’t work.
there are many studies looking at deterrence of the death penalty. Suffice to say that if the punishment is meted out swiftly and publicly (ala public hanging) is more of a deterrent than waiting 12 years on death row. Most capital offenses occur in the heat of the moment, others with serious premeditation that leads the perpetrator to think they are too smart to get caught.
Then there is the cost factor of having a person on death row, the appeals, etc. vs. life.
I think what you are talking about is the deterrent effect of enforcement, not the law itself. This article itself says criminals are not deterred from acquiring firearms because the consequences are a favorable crap shoot. That is not the cause for fraud, murder, or many other crimes (especially violent ones or ones where the government is deprived its cut). They are very strictly enforced making the possibility of severe consequences significantly higher.
Slavishly obeying the dictates of one’s betters is also part of human nature. There have always been plenty of people who just want to be told what to do; the patronage of their more powerful “betters” is a comfort they crave. Most of our current “liberals” fit this to a T.
The problem with the leftist/progressive/communist ideology they espouse is that it assumes the perfectibility of man, when in fact humankind is infinitely corruptible.
Any scheme that gives a select few enlightened individuals the virtually unlimited power to do unto others for their own good is doomed to end in corruption, misery, and death. (See: every country that ever went full communist.)
But the progs keep heading right back to it. Most of them are just clueless sheep; the 90% or so who just want to be part of it because it seems comforting and they want to be taken care of by someone else. They’re the sheep. The utopian idiots.
I’d estimate that less than 1% of them know exactly where all this leads, and plan to be in charge of it all. They’re the evil ones.
And the remaining minority are the true believers: the vindictive SJW fanatics who get a charge out of wielding power over someone else and will do whatever it takes to please the evil hand that feeds them. They’re ones that make the fascist machine really hum.
But enforcing current gun laws would put more dark-skinned people in jail, and the only thing DA Chisholm fights harder than a Scott Walker reelection is actually putting criminals in jail.
One of the inherent flaws in Marxist-Leninist dogma is the creation of the “New Soviet Man”, essentially a subservient creature who slavishly serves the State and therefore his Fellow Man. In all of the millennia of Man on Earth, such a creature has seldom existed and the creation of such is as doomed as the creation of Dr. Frankenstein.
Frankly, I would have to disagree.
I think throughout history you see large swaths of people, whole cultures, civilizations built upon being subservient to a king, an emperor, a warlord, government du jour…I think most people put up with nonsense BS and tyranny because at the end of the day they want somebody to make them feel safe and offload responsibilities of living.
There are really only three options. A person can take all of those responsibilities for himself and upon himself. We generally call this “freedom”.
One can also pay someone else to take on a certain responsibility for us. That is called commerce. And in conjunction with freedom we call it free market capitalism.
The third option – and generally what people opt for because the first two options are too hard or too much of a nuisance – is to delegate some other person or group of persons the right to use force and coercion to create the aura of safety and take on the bulk of responsibilities for us and also to ensure that everyone else is likewise “taken care of.”
Your remarks remind me of Erich Fromm’s book “Escape from Freedom.” If I recall the premise correctly, you just gave a very concise summary of it. Gonna have to dig that one out and re-read it.
In attempting to create “The New Soviet Man” the Soviet Union inadvertently created the polar opposite “Homo Sovieticus”.
Wikipedia has good articles on the ideal and reality.
Criminals us guns for force multiplication too.
That’s probably more of a reason than self-defense.
Some of it’s certainly defensive but, pretty much by definition, some of it is offensive because if it wasn’t then there wouldn’t be much need for the defensive possession in the first place.
“…Still tote your vest man, niggas be tripping/
In the streets without a gat? Nah, nigga ya slippin’…”
I could see how some people involved in a non-violent criminal enterprise, and who are unwilling to commit a crime of force may still available themselves of arms. For example: If I suddenly decide to start running moonshine, and continue to carry my usual brace of pistols for my personal defense, am I using my pistols in furtherance of a crime? Legally I might be, but philosophically I believe it’s clear that isn’t the case.
This is where I say that IMHO, there are simply too many laws about too many things.
I don’t much care what it is, if it’s between two consenting adults and/or doesn’t harm anyone else it should be legal. Simple, effective, cuts through the BS and eliminates a whole lotta reason for the state to lord over us.
Interesting idea, and i want to agree with it, but it gas a flaw. If it’s in error to blame the victim, then it’s just as in error to applaud the victim. Entering into a nominally non-violent illegal enterprise like moonshining nevertheless entails serious risk of criminal violence. You enter that business with forethought.
Strictly speaking, your gun usage might be self-defense and you’re the victim, but that is the lowest quality of victimhood one can achieve. You put yourself in business abundantly violent in its practice. That it could theoretically be conducted sans violence is at best a purely academic construct.
Your involvement in the trade begets violence. You can’t divorce yourself and your use of a firearm from that reality. They’re so closely related that the self-defense distinction vanishes. You have essentially consented to gun violence. That the other guy shoots first is immaterial.
“Entering into a nominally non-violent illegal enterprise like moonshining nevertheless entails serious risk of criminal violence.”
Kinda my point. If moonshining, drug dealing and prostitution were legal they wouldn’t be part of the black market and there wouldn’t be the current level of violence associated with the trade.
Liquor store and owners and their employees rarely shoot it out with a rival store or bar. Ditto legal marijuana dispensaries and legal brothels. When’s the last time you heard about 7-11 employees attacking a Citgo store over territory to sell smokes and dip?
It’s when we criminalize these things that they go to the underground market where violence is common because the players have no legal recourse when wronged. You can’t exactly call the cops when you get robbed or shot at for your drugs, a rival pimp beats on your girls or other moonshiners damage your still because doing so would be an admission of felony activity. So you go break someone’s knees or dirt nap them as a warning to others.
Remove the laws on behavior between consenting adults and watch the rate of violence drop.
That’s why I target criminals for all my crime. (Winky face).
-TX_Lawyer, doing emojis wrong since 2015.
TX:
Lol!
“. . . trying to prevent someone from obtaining a gun who risks their life by NOT having a gun is a fool’s errand. . .”
Every now and then Robert . . . Very well said.
Criminals have guns for the same reasons that cops have guns.
And everybody else. Aside from being a “tool of the trade” for a gangster, it is just as illegal to murder another gangster as it is to shoot your ex-girlfriend and/or her baby that doesn’t look like you.
That said, a gangster has just as much right to a tool to defend his (otherwise worthless) life as anyone else. And generally speaking more of an actual need.
However, if he decides to use that gun for offensive purposes, feel free to shoot him a couple of times.
Flynn is one of those cops who loves to go to DC to push for gun control. He’s been to DC to testify for more gun control many times and he goes on TV and pushes that garbage there too. He bounced around some, he started in MA as a cop and police chief and took his gun control agenda to Milwaukee.
So the Milwaukee Police Chief has this perception that the criminals are illegally carrying for self defense. What I’m wondering is what would Sheriff Clark have to say about this.
Funny, the Criminals said the same thing about the cops.
Whatever. WTF does he know about criminals? Chiefs of police (especially in bigger cities) are so far removed from actually being a cop it’s laughable. Dude is nothing but a friggin’ politician. Who cares what he opines.
Really most cops don’t know a damn thing about criminals because cops generally don’t live in the neighborhoods they police.
This dude has some kind of serious gun fetish. It’s always about illegal guns and crimes committed with guns and easy access to guns. Heck, even if you’re lawfully carrying a gun, he has directed his officers to throw you down and confiscate the gun first, then ask questions. I rarely hear him saying anything about any crimes committed with knives, cars, baseball bats, bare hands, fat mama co-sleeping deaths, etc. As long as they don’t use a gun, he could care less.
The efficacy of the death penalty in deterring first time offenders/murderers is an unknown. The efficacy of the death penalty in preventing convicted murderers from re-offending is 100%.
Reality will hit Milwaukee just like it has hit Baltimore. When the violence gets so bad and it endangers the economy of the city, like it has in Baltimore, Milwaukee will change. But by then it will be to late. Just like it is to late for Baltimore. Baltimore will have “white flight” just like Detroit has.
Well hell chief, do what commie kalifornia does. Control the legal law-abiding citizen. TAX, BAN, LIMIT, BACKGROUND CHECK, etc, etc…. Soon, the criminals and nut jobs will follow suit. Crime has ended, problems solved. Right????
Some might see it as carrying for self defense against the police.
“…human nature being what it is, trying to prevent someone from obtaining a gun who risks their life by NOT having a gun is a fool’s errand. Which is as good a description of gun control as I can muster.”
Which is exactly the motivation for peaceful, responsible people owning guns: the rational impulse to de-risk their own life. This is *exactly why* the anti- messaging works so hard to “un-person” pro gun ownership folks, and twist the statistics. Their case rests on asserting that “Owning a gun does you no good.”, “You aren’t worth protecting.”, or both.
The counter argument is entirely: I own my self. Who are you to get me killed for your safety, worse convenience, and worse yet, emotional comfor?