“Chicago is a town besieged by gun violence, mostly in deprived neighborhoods where life is tough enough without having to worry about whether your kid gets home safely each night. In response, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the police are taking aggressive measures to reduce the violence, including running firearms trade-in programs and pushing moderate gun-control laws. To mock those efforts, even as one might disagree with them, is offensive. Our children lie dead in the morgue. There’s a legitimate debate to be had as to the effectiveness of gun-control laws, a debate that begins on both sides with respect, good will and hard facts. The aim is to persuade, not pummel. But the more groups like Guns Save Life pull stunts like the one last weekend, the more they drive away caring and thoughtful people.” – today’s Sun-Times editorial lamenting Guns Save Life using a Chicago gun buyback to fund their NRA shooting camp for kids
So the Sun-Times says “to mock those efforts, even as one might disagree with them, is offensive.”
I say to keep pushing those efforts, even when all evidence says they do nothing, is offensive.
That they willingly put government guns to the heads of taxpayers and force us to fund these ineffective and essentially worthless programs is doubly offensive.
“a debate that begins on both sides with respect, good will and hard facts”
LOL’ing all over the place here.
“There’s a legitimate debate to be had as to the effectiveness of gun-control laws…”
I’m surprised they conceded even that morsel…
You have to speak liberal. What they mean by legitimate debate is you accept their arguments as fact and STFU.
By legitimate debate they mean the only acceptable source of ‘facts’ will be studies funded by the Brady Campaign.
Mmmm-hmmm. Love hearing that gun-grabber butt-hurt. Keep it coming!
Chicago is besieged by gun violence because of CRIMINAL acts against other criminals and unarmed citizens.
Here’s a good statistic: There is a 0% recidivism rate of felons who have been killed in the commision of a violent crime.
“pushing moderate gun-control laws.”
The gun laws here are moderate?
“Our children lie dead in the morgue.”
It isnt our children, it is black children and adults for the most part, just as the picture above demonstrates. I’m willing to bet at least 90% of the readership here is white, and more than 75% of the readership of the Sun Times is as well.
So “no-issue” is a “moderate” gun control law? I’d hate to think of what a tough gun control law might look like.
In the interest of promoting legitimate debate and not wanting to drive away caring and thoughtful people, I’d like to tell the editorial writers of the Sun-Times to go f^ck themselves. See? I can be nice.
Oh Ralph always so PC and eloquent lmao!!!
Yes Ralph, that was VERY nicely put, and I’m in total agteement.
Interesting how the comments on the Times’ web site all diss the editorial.
And the fact you have to register to comment too.
Can we have a Gun-Grabber Tears of the Day? They really make my day.
“There’s a legitimate debate to be had as to the effectiveness of gun-control laws, a debate that begins on both sides with respect, good will and hard facts.”
No, there is no legitimate debate. One side has all the facts, logic, and common sense working in its favor, and the other is purely lies, emotion, and manipulation. There is no debate to be had where guaranteed rights exist.
Further, the day I meet an anti that espouses respect, good will, and/or hard facts is the day pigs land on the moon.
I am sure it is true in Chicago as well, but here in Boston, based on what I read in the globe and herald, 95% of the murders are 1) a drug deal turned robbery, or 2) a thug gets “disrespected”, and pulls a gun. (Carried Mexican style, and shot sideways, of course.) As an example, we recently had a trial where the perps killed a 14 year old because his older brother bumped into them on a scooter. How can you legislate that kind of behavior away? Neither of them was old enough to legally own, let alone carry a gun, but they did not seem to care. How is preventing me from owning a gun going to stop someone who would kill over such a trivial slight, or imagined slight?
I grew up in a neighborhood just like the one you talk about. The ONLY valid currency in ghettos is RESPECT! If someone steps on your shoes you have to beat them down. If someone disses you, they deserve a beat down. Someone looks at you, it’s time for a beat down. If you have your buddies with you and you find someone alone, time for a beat down. Add to that illegal guns and illegal drugs and you have lots of shooting and beat downs. Five of my friends were shot during highschool years. One was killed. The only solution was to move out.
I know what you say is true, but I don’t understand why this culture of machismo and violence persists. I don’t understand what causes it.
It’s very very simple: MONEY.
There’s a reason for welfare, food stamps and medicaid. It buys good behavior. The more affluent a neighborhood is, the less violent crime there is. Once the affluence reaches the point to where the residents have all their needs AND wants met, there is no longer crime in the neighborhood.
If I had my way every single poor American would have free higher education. The increase in income would reduce violence, depression, crime, drug dependence, alcoholism, domestic violence, child abuse, etc. There is no other way to reduce crime. Gun control is trying to prevent crime after it’s fully bloomed. Increase in income through higher education and equal opportunity wouldn’t nip it in the bud, it would yank it up from the roots. Of course, that wouldn’t get local politicians reelected. Their voters would whine about freebies to the “criminals” and poor.
Many say there would just be freeloaders, but it’s not about the ADULTS. It’s about the CHILDREN. A higher quality education would change the CHILDREN. The future will always be dim for the poor blacks in America as long as the children are stuck in the poverty cycle.
(I’m not saying that money is the end of crime. It’s a bell curve like anything else.)
L.Y., “Free higher education” is a joke. The folks that are part of the problem didn’t take advantage of free public schools to begin with. You want to dump more money down hole for what? For them to piss away their time and our money once again? Why do high-minded folks like you feel it has to be higher education? Why not a trade? There’s already a reward system for following the rules: you go to school and not screw up too much and you have a shot at higher education or a trade. I really have a hard time envisioning ANY of these gang bangers ending up as an engineer, accountant, doctor or anything meaningful that you’ve constructed in your fantasy world. We have enough ethnic studies “students”, history majors, etc.
SeanC,
Higher education or vocational skills, all the same to me. My statements intent was that they have something more than a useless highschool diploma.
Free higher education wouldn’t be the waste you think it is, because they would have to pass entrance exams and the application process. In my time in school alone, there were dozens, DOZENS, who couldn’t afford post-highschool training or college. As you say, a reward system is in place, but the reward is unaffordable. They ended up trying to work skill-less jobs. If that didn’t cut it they ended up on assistance. If their job+assistance didn’t cut it, they ended up committing crime just to feed themselves and keep the heat on.
Should we expect them to simply choose the proper choices without outside help? Should we expect them to overcome adversity without assistance? Sure, but I grew up poor and know better. There is not even a single example of what success looks like when you are poor. You don’t know the path because no one you know has taken it. The schools tell you, “You can be anything you want.” But they don’t tell you what the possibilities are. You can’t even dream when you are poor because you don’t know what the dream is about!
No one reaches out to help the poor, NO ONE! Churches give food, but very little of it. So the gov’t forces help through taxation. If only 10% of the children are saved from the cycle this way, eventually that particular race will wend it’s way out of the cycle. Proof is in the numbers. Look at what the racial makeup is in inner cities around the country now. I bet you that blacks are on the decline and latinos are on the ascension. Why? The system is working. Takes decades.
Sean, I don’t know why you would be against helping the poor. Your tax money saves lives and prevents crime, but I guess you just want your money for yourself.
L.Y. – Who said I was against helping the poor? The key I see is “culture”. You rose out of a “bad” area. I’ll bet in order to do that, you rejected the thug/dependency culture at some point. That “come to Jesus” moment can’t be forced on someone nor handed out by the government. I completely agree that there are not enough good role models in the inner city. As long as the race hustlers like Jesse Jackson and Luis Gutierrez and the likes of Jeremiah Wright have sway, progress will be slow. I’m not a religious person, but if you think the church is only feeding folks, then you’ve missed WHY they’re doing that. I’ll lay it on thick: they’re setting a trap, baited with food. They’re attempting to sneak culture in. I guess they were too subtle for you. Also, most folks aren’t against paying taxes, they just don’t like to see those taxes wasted. Bathe in your constructed moral superiority, but don’t come demanding some of my money to support your “good” ideas.
L.Y., you have your cause and effect reversed. It’s the earning of money and a home that makes people respect others and want to have peace. It’s becoming the kind of person that can hold a job, delay gratification, and plan for the future that makes you a law-abiding citizen that others want to be around.
Take a lout and simply give him or her money, food, clothing, and a house, and you have a worse lout that resents the givers.
Simply put they are at the point “practically” where no one can legally own a gun in Chicago. Yet the criminals have lots of guns and I don’t even see a slow down.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that gun control doesn’t work.
Chicago is besieged by something worse than “gun” violence; a media company which has sold itself out to the Chicago Political Machine.
Ladies and Gents:
Make sure you read the comments on the Sun-Times editorial piece. They are PRICELESS!
John
I did. You’re right. Priceless.
Not one comment in support of the editorial. Not even one.
Chicagoans are just getting what they deserve at this point. They may cry tears, but I won’t.
Truer words have never been spoke.
The reasons for big city violence are apparent and obvious
Begging the criminals to stop shooting. Yeah, that’ll work. Morons.
First question on seeing the image: Was it an anti-gun, or anti-abortion protest?
Well played, Kevin.
Ah, moderate gun control laws. The laws of Chicago and of Illinois are exactly what gun control advocates call for nationwide. There is, of course, nothing moderate about them, but that’s the label that control freaks give. They’re willing to allow a tiny number of good citizens to have a .22 target pistol that is disassembled and kept at police headquarters. Doesn’t that make you feel warm and fuzzy? No? You must be a racist meanie, then.
I’m glad that I live in one of the free states of the United States.
” deprived neighborhoods”
That’s a good one. Maybe a little more money can fix it.
What exactly are they deprived of? Between AA, welfare, food stamps, section 8, free healthcare, and a host of other taxpayer-funded subsidies, many pull in an income that exceeds most middle class folks that go to work everyday. (and pay the taxes that support thug vermin)
They’re deprived of nothing. What they are is lacking. Lacking a moral compass. Yet, after all these years, it’s still OUR fault. Maybe they should “keep it real” and look at Jesse, Al, Louis, Jeremiah, and Barack for real answers to their woes.
White flight became a phenomena for a reason and it had little to do with abject racism.
Please, any support to these claims? What percentage of the people living in these neighborhoods are “thug vermin”? Are they all un-employed? Do they really make more money than the average middle-class worker? Is white flight really just a response to violence? My folks moved out of Detroit and to the suburbs in the 1950s: Detroit was not violent, was not poor, was not a bad place to live–but my parents, like lots of people, were uncomfortable with the changing demographics.
No doubt there was and is racism. It was Cicero, Illinois, a suburb on the westside of Chicago, that had racially restrictive covenants in their property deeds barring sales to blacks, imposed by the majority Polish and bohemian community. It took the SCOTUS to finally overturn those restrictions, but signs and allegations of “red lining” persist. But there are stll sme identifiable “ethnic” communities (Irish, Italian, Bohunk, Polish, etc. ) Racial mixing was not a trait of Chicago. But according to the Chicago Commissioner of Police, most of the gang crime is in specific neighborhoods that are entirely or almost entirely black.
Maybe we should send UN peacekeepers into Chicago as observers.
this goes way beyond gun control. men, real mean, need to start raising these children they bring into this world, especially the boys, who grow up to be mindless, thoughtless thugs. Chicago is one of the most racially polarized cities in the US, and as other posters have mentioned, the housing situation in Chicago for decades has led to the gang subculture that’s fueling the current homicide rate. The problem runs so deep and has gone on for so long…but it all starts in the home.