gun store buying surge
(AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)
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You say the ironic thing about the selective enforcement of gun laws is it’s precisely the people in the communities that get cracked down on who may have the most justified concern for their personal safety. For them, oftentimes gun ownership is part of a terrible downward spiral: Unsafe communities make people seek out weapons for self-protection. Then they get caught up in the justice system on a possession charge. Meanwhile, the police arresting them have done little to actually make their neighborhoods safer.

If these are the communities where you see an uptick in violence, those seem to be the people who have a reason to carry. That’s not something that I do. I live on the South Side of Chicago. But it’s understandable, and I see it every day when I talk to our attorneys, that people are scared. They turn on the news every single day and they hear carjacking, robbery, murder, robbery, carjacking. And people are choosing to protect themselves.

We have this assumption that making things a felony disallows people from performing that act. And I just haven’t been convinced of that. At this point in Chicago, folks are not waiting for the government to tell them that they can carry. And I think too often we overestimate the power of the criminal justice system to solve problems or fix the things that we need. I think people are living under the assumption that because you’ve got this very complicated scheme for getting licensed, that means people aren’t going to carry. I think what it means is that people aren’t going to carry legally.

— Mary Harris in A Criminal Justice Reformer’s Case for Looser Gun Laws

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36 COMMENTS

  1. Jeff Cooper had this figured out several decades ago:

    ‘If violent crime is to be curbed, it is only the intended victim who can do it. The felon does not fear the police, and he fears neither judge nor jury. Therefore what he must be taught to fear is his victim.”

  2. I can think of at least two ways in which these communities are their own worst enemies.

    One is that they commit misdemeanor crimes and fail to show up for their court appearance. Later on, they get stopped for something trivial, like a busted tail light, that should be just a fix it ticket with no prosecution if they get it repaired. However, the cop finds a warrant, because they didn’t show up for court, and has no choice but to take them to jail. Then, they fight the cop for the same reason they skipped their court appearance. When they get hurt, it’s called police brutality.

    The other is that the community blames the cops for the consequences of their failure to (1) not commit the crime in the first place, (2) show up for court to put the incident behind them, and (3) surrender peacefully when the cops inevitably catch up to them.

    • Shes been laid off for two months.
      Wouldn’t have did her any good to show up for court.
      The working at home just didn’t pan out.

    • “I can think of at least two ways in which these communities are their own worst enemies.

      One is that they commit misdemeanor crimes and fail to show up for their court appearance.”

      That is where the concept of ‘Night Court’ came from…

  3. she’s been laid off for two months, the previous month her paycheck was $20328 ONLY working at home for a couple of hours each day…

    check out… … … GoogleJoin

    • “she’s been laid off for two months,…”

      My brain-damaged troll hasn’t had a woman yet that he didn’t have to pay for, and not even you can help him out, Jess… 😉

      • “My brain-damaged troll hasn’t had a woman yet that he didn’t have to pay for,”

        whoopise, let me fix that for you…

        “My brain-damaged troll hasn’t had a woman yet that he didn’t have to blow up, if women are his thing.”

        there ya go, all fixed now

  4. Cool Mary…I would add “leave the Dim plantation”. They are responsible for the BS we have to go through in ILLannoy and especially Cook county. Black folks have been carrying “something” for generations.

    • ” i never carried legally until it was possible to do so.”

      I like this line in the article :

      “In your ideal world, what does the legal framework around guns look like?

      I think it’s a framework that doesn’t include the criminal system. This idea that we criminalize possession of guns, I just don’t think it’s a working model.”

      What a concept, leave the good people alone, and arrest the criminal doing criminal things with a gun…

      • I think you need a minor correction.

        ” . . . and arrest the criminal doing criminal things.” The “with a gun” has no real meaning, IMO.

        It’s kinda like “with a computer”. Con artists have been a thing since time immemorial. Today, when we catch a con artist, they are charged with all sorts of things, then charged a second time because “on a computer”.

        We need to stop considering “with a gun” and “with a computer”, and just charge the underlying crimes committed. Murder is murder, no matter the weapon used. Theft is theft, no matter the tools used.

  5. The article pushes the fable of “systematic racism”.
    I’m betting the person is primarily interested in keeping career criminals of color from having to go to jail.

    • Not. Once stopped with a firearm, even with no prior arrests, POC get caught up in the system, score a felony for seeking only to protect themselves, and in some places get healthy sentences for their trouble, losing their jobs, their homes and their families. In California, for example, carrying without a permit is a wobbler that may be charged either as a felony or a misdemeanor. If you get hit with the felony, a sh*tstorm follows.

    • I think systemic racism is real. You can see it in Democrat run cities, where blacks are herded onto the plantation, denied the right to keep and bear arms, and generally shot dead when any cop sees a “nigga wid a gun!”

      Maybe less Democratic states and cities have that, but to a far lesser degree.

  6. Some people deserve to be shot. Depends on whose ox is getting gored. Someone said that. Anybody know? Of course, I could have the quote all wrong.

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