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“The value of harsher sentencing as a tool of prevention is debatable: Hoodlums typically don’t consult the sentencing guidelines before committing crimes. But we also know gang members don’t fear prison now because punishments are too lenient. So let those who don’t get the message otherwise learn the hard way. (Sen. Kwame) Raoul calls it a ‘common sense’ approach.'” – Chicago Tribune editorial board in Harsher punishments of gun offenders would save lives in Chicago [via chicagotribune.com]

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92 COMMENTS

  1. As always, ChiTrib makes it sound good, but the lead of: “The value of harsher sentencing as a tool of prevention is debatable” makes me think if three years isn’t sufficient, why would 7 non-mandatory years work better? I don’t have faith in either legislative or judicial leniency, but chicago does, and I fortunately don’t live there.

    • At the very least, a seven year sentence vs a three year sentence would mean (barring early release) four more years society would have that person to fear any more.
      We need to ask ourselves: If what we are doing now (and in Chicago and other places with high criminal gang activity) isn’t working (and it isn’t), what will work?
      Remember, prison time isn’t actually meant to be a time in which society spends money and energy trying to reform the inmates. Instead, it is supposed to be a punishment, and relief for society from further depredation by that inmate.
      Keeping that in mind, longer (“harsher”) sentences certainly would seem to be a viable measure.

  2. Okay so how about a variant of three strikes: strike three you’re dead upn conviction, no further appeals?

    • Is it really fair to put those to death who are products of liberalism?

      Raised without knowing at least one parent, parents who don’t care what their kid does, programs that ensure people get support when they have done nothing to earn it, and so on.

      I know it probably puts me at odds with many on this side of the debate, but the “worst” punishment we have is the death penalty, and does it stop murder? Of course not.

      Personally, I think conservatives need to make sure that the focus is put squarely on the shoulders of the liberal politicians and their policies that have created this mess. Conservatives fall squarely into the liberal trap when we allow them to use inner city violence as a scapegoat for the failures of their policies. Chicago has been run by liberals for over 40 years, they try to get us to focus on crime policies (to include gun control), which is exactly what they want. It’s a ruse. Their social policies are the cause of all this, and they have no interest in relinquishing the control that gives them through votes.

    • What kind of convictions are you talking about? Gang related convictions or violent criminal convictions? Three minor convictions and death? Imagine what the progressives would do to us with a policy like that.

      • This issue came up in California which, for all its liberalism, has a harsh criminal code and sentencing guidelines, when the third strike was for misdemeanor shoplifting, elevated to a felony because of prior convictions. Seemed pretty unfair to impose a mandatory life sentence for a minor crime…

        • That’s disingenuous.

          California’s three strikes law required two prior felonies, before the third felony conviction would get yoy 25 to life. In 2012, CA voters changed the law to require that the third felony had to be a serious or violent felony.

          With regard to shoplifting, you’re making it sound like someone just swiped a Snickers bar and that’s it. Shoplifting is a felony if the value of goods stolen is $400+, because it steps up to grand theft from petty theft.

          Shoplifting that would otherwise have been a misdemeanor in its own right can be elevated to felony bassd om prior convictions, like you say. However, that requires THREE prior misdemeanor theft convictions before the fourth misdemeanor theft conviction becomes a felony conviction, itself providing the third felony strike.

          We’re talking about life long career criminals here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know about the slice of pizza guy. F him. Another career criminal. They get what they deserve.

  3. Of course, preventing isn’t synonymous with deterrence. There’s also incapacitation: the fact that someone currently locked up in Maximum Security cannot be out in the streets preying on decent citizens. Long sentences may not help deterrence, but they sure do work for incapacitation.

  4. Going out on a limb here, but how many of these crimes are being committed by gang members who are incarcerated at the time? Don’t you have to be out on the street to commit the crime? And how many of these crimes are being committed by repeat offenders? If a career criminal spends a quarter of his adult life in prison he has more opportunity to commit more crimes than if he spent three quarters of his life in prison. Pretty simple math.

      • Slap on some leg irons and make them earn their keep. Problem solved. Anyway, what’s the cost of letting them run around robbing, raping and killing people?

        • “Anyway, what’s the cost of letting them run around robbing, raping and killing people?”

          Much more than the cost of a single round of .40 S&W, or a syringe full of warfarin.

          I don’t want to pay for someone else’s continuous stream of bad choices. Call me harsh or heartless if you will.

      • “…the problem then is paying for someone to be incarcerated…”
        When we say that we can’t afford the results of a law, any law, then that law must be taken off the books. What possible good is a law we can’t enforce?
        Or, to look at it another way, what possible good is a society that says it can’t afford to punish convicted criminals?

        It isn’t simply a matter of dollars, either. The damage to society by claiming that longer prison sentences are too expensive is devastating. Much moreso that the cost of keeping repeat offenders (and that’s who we are talking about here) in jail where they can not prey on honest people.
        And prison doesn’t need to be as expensive as it currently is. We can easily say to ourselves, “If we make those who volunteer to serve our country in the military live in sparse barracks, and eat military food (and, if you’ve ever eaten in a basic training chow hall, you know what I mean), why should we treat our convicts any better?”

        • Many offenders do live in barracks, but such facilities are inadequate to house the serious offenders who will kill anything and anyone given half a chance. Once sentenced to life, there is, in most sates, no harsher penalty that can be meted out, and thus these convicts simply do not care. Many are violently mentally ill. Others are sociopathic. In some facilities, yelling nonstop, spitting, urinating through the bars and “gassing” (throwing feces) at guards is an everyday thing. These prisoners cannot be removed from a cell except fully shackled because they are simply too dangerous. MAx and SuperMax facilities are the only places that can hold them.

    • Chicago judicial works the cash flow of bad behavior. Simple economics of the turn rate. The more you revolve a criminal the higher cash flow.

      • mk- Correct, money is the motivator. That’s why Illinois state Rep. Brandon Phelps “NRA backed” concealed carry bill has criminal penalties of SIX MONTHS or ONE YEAR in jail for ALL violations, including the new “crime” of Duty to Inform. This creates “business” for the cops, courts, and lawyers to drag licensed citizens through the system. They all make money, including NRA.

        When Alan Gura first filed McDonald v. Chicago, NRA tried to sabotage the suit. After Gura did all the work and took Otis McDonald to the Supreme Court, NRA later got $1.3 MILLION in legal fees from the city of Chicago.

        The Borg Cube at NRA HQ has now morphed and finds that using blacks as front men for lawsuits can be profitable.

        After making money on lawsuits, NRA profits when lobbyists pass the worst bills possible with criminal penalties. This creates job security for lobbyists like Todd Vandermyde to “fix” the shit bills they put up in the first place.

        • Demo Man is full of crap, as usual. Reading Illinois Concealed Carry Statute puts the lie to half of his usual rants. Consider the other half lies as well, and drive on.

        • Button- If it were not for “Chicago Democrat” Black Caucus state Reps. like LaShawn Ford, Chris Welch and Will Davis, Illinois’ concealed carry bill would be worse than it is, if that is humanly possible.

          The Black Caucus Reps. opposed Duty to Inform, and sponsor Brandon Phelps refused to take DTI OUT of his “NRA backed” carry bill.

          Anyone can smell a rat in Illinois, and it’s name is Todd Vandermyde. White racist losers like Curtis compose the Vandermyde cheerleader squad who send checks to NRA so they can backstab their own members.

    • No, they don’t have to be on the streets to commit the crime. I talked with a sheriff’s deputy here and he said that of inmates put in for violent crime, two-fifths get new charges for things they do while incarcerated — and that’s with a system of persecution of snitches on the inside!

      The only thing to do with the truly violent is put them on a reservation where they can be violent to each other and leave the rest of us alone. Trying to keep them non-violent behind bars doesn’t work, either.

  5. It appears the comments are predicated on caring about the offender’s willingness to be deterred and not ridding society of the offender. This thinking is the product of machine politics that tolerated crime for decades and now finds itself being eaten by it. Who cares about the offender? Who cares about the politicians who tolerated the offenders? It’s time that Chicago collapses.

    • Exactly.
      As I said above, the purpose of prison is twofold: to punish the criminal, and to protect society while said criminal is behind bars.
      Rehabilitation is sort of like any addiction: If you don’t want to change, you won’t change.
      That’s why three-strike laws are good for society; after the third strike, it’s time to put the criminal away and move on.

    • The question “Who cares about the offenders?” is a step on the path to tyranny. First, it assumes that the only people who get locked up are guilty, which we know is far from the case. Second, it assumes that whatever the state decides is a bad thing is sufficient to declare human lives worthless.

      As for change, gang members have less incentive to change themselves from being in prison than they do out on the streets. Their whole sense of self is wrapped up in status in the gang, and that’s just affirmed in spades in prison where all of life is gangs. Being in prison, for a gang member, is a way to get promoted in the ranks fast by doing violence to members of other gangs. All of this means that putting gang members in prison is just a way to guarantee violent prisons. It also guarantees that prison, rather than reform anyone, serves to make prisoners even worse.

      So it really qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment, insofar as it counts as punishment at all, since making someone more criminal than before is cruel — not just to the person, but to society. Given that the Constitution actually affirms involuntary servitude for those convicted of crimes, we have a clear pointer to a method already proven to build more character than the current system: labor. Let’s go back to work gangs, but with application of things learned since we last used them in order to actually make some progress in correcting people.

      • Actually the question that asks “Who cares about the offenders?” is sarcasm that refers to convicted criminal offenders. No one has suggested that anyone be treated as guilty until proven so. As for tyranny, what do you say to the thousands of American trapped in their homes due to rampant, violent crime on Chicago’s south and west sides? Those people have done nothing wrong yet are victimized by criminals, bordering on terrorists, every day. As to the assumption that “whatever the state decides is a bad thing is sufficient to declare human lives worthless” are we to ignore murder, aggravated battery, robbery and rape? These are crimes against people that need resolution and the offenders controlled. And, why is an offender’s life worth more than his victim?

        Our society has spent 22 trillion dollars (NCPA,2015) since 1964 in a war on poverty and crime and the five year recidivism rate still sits at 76.6% (NIJ,2016). Where is the good that the treatment programs were supposed to give us? The time for feel good programs is over. Society is far better off with criminal offenders removed from it. It is time criminal offenders be warehoused far from their home and not allowed return to society for a very long time. It is time to restore personal and not collective responsibility for a individual’s behavior.

  6. We need special institutions for perpetrators of gun violence. Perps get put into single sealed cells at start of sentence and don’t leave it until completion of sentence. No perks, no recreation, no clothes, hole-in-the-floor potty, view Barney and Mr. Rodgers reruns 24/7, minimal bland mushy tranqualized food intake, one ten minute monitored phone call per week while robot barber cuts your hair.

    Most gun crimes would cease.
    .

    • Okay, that takes care of the people who commit violence against guns: buyback sponsors, most of the California legislature, and anyone who thinks a Dremel is a gunsmithing tool of first resort.

      What do you propose we do with people who commit violence using guns?

  7. Criminals don’t consult the sentencing guidelines prior to committing a crime? Well guess what, they don’t consult gun control laws either. Sure some people screw up as kids, and assuming it isn’t too serious a crime, maybe they deserve a second chance. But once you are well into adulthood, and have a criminal history, go to hell. You no longer get revolving door treatment. I am totally fine with my tax dollars going towards your continued, uninterrupted incarceration. I don’t care if their harsh (I.e. Fair) sentence deters the next guy, as long as it punishes the one who has already been convicted.

    • A common attitude toward gun laws among criminals was summed up for me by a kid I met while helping someone move out of “felony flats”. At 16, he carried a gun, always; when I asked why, he looked at me like I was stupid, and replied that if he carried, sure, he risked getting whacked by the legal system for violating their laws, but if he didn’t, he even more risked being dead because without a gun he was just sheep.

      BTW, a telling point in there is his attitude that it’s “their laws” — he, like many Americans, no longer regarded himself as belonging to the same system as the PTBs, but viewed them as little different from an occupying power unconnected to his world.

  8. Chicago police have identified 1,350 individuals as high risk. Assume, on average, they are 20 years old and need to be put away for 50 years before they become too old and feeble to do harm. The cost of imprisonment in Illinois is $38k per inmate per year. Multiply those numbers together and you get $2.6 billion. Illinois is too broke to afford that.

    • As I said earlier, we should never say we can’t afford to enforce our laws.
      Either find a way to afford it (there are several), or get rid of the laws and live with the consequences.
      The second is, in effect, what some places (like Chicago) have done; it’s too expensive (they say) to give out long sentences, so we will live with the violent crime.
      Just remember that the next time you say we can’t afford our laws.

      • The first law to cease enforcing would be prosecution of holders of carry licenses, for anything. So we have a small army of folks who will just kill all the bad guys and present their “get out of jail free” card, reload and head on down the block. Like cops, IOW. Crime would drop. Fast.

        • Honestly, it is not going to help at all. 80% of this is gang on gang murders (goes higher when you include people caught in the crossfire). They are not targeting law abiding people.

        • Larry- Every violation of Illinois concealed carry bill has criminal penalties of SIX MONTHS or ONE YEAR in jail. That’s how state Rep.Brandon Phelps wrote his “NRA backed” carry bill in 2013. The whole purpose of Illinois’ carry bill is to encourage police to set up and arrest licensed citizens.

          The cops, courts and lawyers all make money, and NRA lobbyist Todd Vandermyde has job security to “fix” the shit bill he put up in the first place. He got all the penalty language from the anti-gun police unions, along with the new “crime” of Duty to Inform.

          NRA and the police unions are both on the same side: against you.

    • $2.6 billion divided by fifty years is $52 million per year. It’s still a lot of money, but compared to the cost of arresting and prosecuting each of them multiple times, it’s a bargain.

      Illinois is broke for many reasons. Employers leaving the state because of uncontrolled crime in major cities is one of those reasons.

      • Cletus- Thank you for the financial & socioeconomic analysis from the white good old boys of ISRA.

        Since you care about the black crime rate in Chicago, you will be petitioning the Illinois state legislature to remove the public transportation ban from Brandon Phelps carry bill, right? Nah, you guys don’t ride the bus, you drive your monster trucks everywhere.

        Have you grown out your beard to proper Duck Dynasty proportions for the IGOLD March of the Hicks- 2017? It’s very important to conform to the group to be a real good old boy. Wheelchairs will be available at the ISRA booth if your gout is acting up.

  9. Even if it isn’t a perfect prevention, a locked up criminal is one that will not harass me on the street. So i would like the sentences to be as long as possible. If you commited armed robbery for the third time there is absolutely no reason to assume you won’t do it a fourth time so there is absolutely no reason to release this person from prison ever again.

  10. Three time loser rule would work quickly with the gangstas. Also felony murder rule. Death penalty at the end of either. And of course armed citizens posses taking care of business in the hood. I have to believe that there are legit shopkeepers, working people, former military who are sick and tired of being played. Of course it will never happen in Chicago or any large city.

    • Reader- “And of course armed citizens posses taking care of business in the hood. I have to believe that there are legit shopkeepers, working people, former military who are sick and tired of being played.”

      A concealed carry license is almost useless in Chicago because CTA buses and trains are off-limits, and there are criminal penalties of SIX MONTHS or ONE YEAR for every violation of the carry bill. That’s the way state Rep. Brandon Phelps wrote it, and he lives in Harrisburg in far southern Illinois. The racist hillbillies who vote for politicians like Phelps don’t care about the black crime rate in Chicago, they use blacks like Otis McDonald as fronts for lawsuits, then sell them out.

      “Of course it will never happen in Chicago or any large city.”

      Blacks in Chicago will continue to be disarmed and killed like Philando Castile in Minnesota because of traitors like Todd Vandermyde. He put Duty to Inform in Brandon Phelps 2013 concealed carry bill, not Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

      The racist hicks from southern IL think the carry bill is just great. Illinois’ carry bill is so wonderful that it doesn’t need to be improved at all, so Vandermyde is trying to legalize suppressors as we speak. Chris Cox & Chuck Cunningham at NRA/ILA don’t know or care what Vandermyde does as long as NRA members are too stupid to figure it out.

      • Demo man, get off your ass and organize Chicago locals to kick their state representatives out of office until the law is changed. I think 4 will be all you need to do it.

        • Binder- Back in the bad old days circa 2011, Valinda Rowe from Illinois Carry was telling her sheeple that once “we” “get a bill passed” “it only takes a majority to change it” (for the better) It’s been three and a half years since Brandon Phelps shitty concealed carry bill passed in 2013, and it just keeps getting worse:

          Duty to Inform was extended to out of state license holders and everyone in the car in Brandon Phelps SB836 “trailer bill” (they snuck that one through on the last Sunday in May 2015) plus mandatory gun seizure for cops and ambulance drivers got tacked on to the Duty to Inform (thanks Todd!) there are still criminal penalties of SIX MONTHS or ONE YEAR for hundreds of gun-free zones, and still a ban on public transpo carry (but who cares about blacks in Chicago anyway?)

          The hicks in southern Illinois are starting to wonder if Valinda is really Mother Theresa after all. NRA lobbyist Todd Vandermyde is trying to legalize suppressors as we speak. The Insane Clown Posse in southern Illinois has it all figured out.

    • Adding in the death penalty would only make it more expensive and therefore less likely to be done in a state with finances as bad as those of Illinois.

      The average cost of life in prison is somewhere on the order of $750K while the average DP case costs the state $1.25 million. As an average it’s something like $90K per year more expensive for a death row inmate than it is for a lifer. This is due to the mandatory appeals process in death penalty cases which is designed to try to prevent the execution of people who are actually innocent.

      • “The average cost of life in prison is somewhere on the order of $750K while the average DP case costs the state $1.25 million. As an average it’s something like $90K per year more expensive for a death row inmate than it is for a lifer. This is due to the mandatory appeals process in death penalty cases which is designed to try to prevent the execution of people who are actually innocent.”

        Just out of curiosity, since you seem to have done the math on this, what is the value of a life taken by one of these felons released because of a false economy?
        I really want to know.
        Could you also please place a value on the grief felt by that dead person’s loved ones?
        Or, if you think no one will be killed, how about the cost involved in just a serious injury? Was that factored into your math?

        Just for those who haven’t got the message: saying we can’t afford to carry out our laws is beyond stupid.
        Either get rid of the laws, find a way to afford the punishments they carry, or live with the consequences.

        • I can’t fully reply to you because no matter what I do this site marks the post as spam.

          Suffice to say your sarcasm is noted and dismissed out of hand.

          Reality has budget constraints whether you like it or not. States in fiscal distress, such as Illinois, are not going to line people up for a more expensive punishment because they don’t have money as it is. You can argue that they should restructure the money so they have the money for the penal system but that’s not going to happen. This line of discussion is about as useful as talking about the gold plated jet I’m buying tomorrow.

          To be brutally honest with you, I generally don’t care about the “human cost” in Chicago because we know that most of the people shot to death in that city were career criminals themselves. Their death at the hands of a fellow gangbanger is actually doing society as a whole a favor because the dead person ain’t committing no more crimes.

          Yes, there are bystanders that get shot and bystanders that die. That sucks. However it does nothing to change the statistical reality that the #1 thing you can do to avoid crying over your kid’s casket is keep them out of a criminal lifestyle. Further, if the adult relations of the people doing the shooting did their goddamn job as a parent we wouldn’t have the bystanders because we wouldn’t have the shooters.

          You can’t simply incarcerate or kill your way out of this problem. To attempt to do so is a fool’s errand. That’s but one part of the solution and the solution will be two things no one wants to hear: hard and long like Ron Jeremy in a teenager. This problem wasn’t created in a day or even a few years. It was created over decades. It will take at least a generation of hard work while ignoring PC nonsense to fix.

        • strych9 said: a rather long scribe that I won’t bother quoting.
          If I read you correctly, though, you are saying that because a society doesn’t have the resources, that’s just a “reality” we all have to live with. You amplify that particular line of reasoning by saying “To be brutally honest with you, I generally don’t care about the “human cost” in Chicago because we know that most of the people shot to death in that city were career criminals themselves. Their death at the hands of a fellow gangbanger is actually doing society as a whole a favor because the dead person ain’t committing no more crimes.” I understand that concept, and recoil from it. That type of logic leads to free-fire zones, if the city fathers and LEAs were to adopt it. That should be unacceptable. I understand that to you, it isn’t, but it should be.
          There are ways to make enforcing laws more economical. One would be to put them in old WWII barracks, like I was in when I enlisted. They are cheap. Another would be to put them in camps like Camp Crockett (don’t believe the stories of some people who claim the trainees were put in Quonset huts; they were not), in Fort Gordon, GA. These trainees, mostly draftees, were put out in the boondocks, in tents, in weather that often reached the high 90s, with humidity that often exceeded 100%. There were few “permanent” buildings, and A/C was not available. TV was for training purposes only. A small PX was available.
          I do not see why we treat our convicted criminals any better than this. If it was good enough for draftees, it is certainly good enough for those who volunteer to be in such a situation. It is certainly a lot less expensive than the prisons we have today, which is one reason it costs so much to house them. If families of three or four can get by with less, I don’t see any reason why we should spend anything like what we do on convicted criminals.
          The Romans discovered what happens when you refuse to fund your defense. They relied on outsiders (we are doing the same thing now with private prisons here in the US), and we know (or should know) how that worked out for them.
          I will repeat: If we want to claim we can’t afford to enforce our laws, get rid of the laws. Or, FIND a way to afford it. The alternative is what we are seeing in Chicago and other liberal-led cities.
          Simply saying “We can’t afford it” is the same thing as saying, “Well, it sucks, and we could fix it, but I don’t want to pay to fix it.”

        • Bill, you misunderstand me.

          What I think is irrelevant. You will run into budget constraints on this topic. Look at that dam in Cali. They’ve known it needed repairs for over a decade but Cali needs a shiney new bullet train… So yeah.

          That’s what you get from government and no amount of logical, moral or ethical arguments will change it. The folks in Illinois by and large seem to think that locking up a career criminal for a long time is racist because he happens to be black. They’re not going to vote to spend more money to, quite racistly, give him the needle.

          Further, while my comments may cause you to recoil in horror that is only because you’re refusing to see reality. Would you rather those folks drove to Buffalo Grove and exclusively shot innocent people? Obviously you would not.

          Now, I said I don’t care and honestly, I don’t. I spent a year of my life volunteering with drug addicts and I have no fucks left to give about people who willfully throw their life away. It’s not like, by and large, the targets of these shootings are nice and upstanding people. They’re career criminals who decided, of their own free will, to engage in a dangerous lifestyle knowing full well what that could lead to. They made their bed and while I won’t celebrate them having to lie in that bed I sure as hell won’t waste my time and energy mourning it either.

          There’s what should be and what is. There’s where we should go and where we’re actually headed. You can change one of those things, not the other. Reality sucks.

        • I am a strong believer in free fire zones, and submit they may be the only really practical answer. When gangbangers are executed by their neighbors every time they show their faces on the street, the problem will be over. So long as the police spend more time and effort corralling and prosecuting vigilantes than primary evildoers, that will not happen, and the cops love that shit because the really bad dudes will kill *them*! When a cop can instantly say “good riddance”, that should be the end of the investigation.

  11. Kwame Raoul is the Illinois state senator from Hyde Park, which is a liberal area by the University of Chicago on the south side. He holds Barack Obama’s old senate seat. He is touted as a civil libertarian and a protector of civil rights of the black community in Chicago, which is a lie.

    Raoul’s judiciary committee advanced Illinois’ SB1304 Body Cam bill in 2015, which was trumpeted as a Great Leap Forward in police accountability. That is a lie. There are no criminal charges for police who turn off body cams or delete videos. The police unions wanted to treat failure to record as a “departmental charge” and that’s what they got.

    That’s why only two of five cameras on scene were “working” when Laquan McDonald was shot. The Body Cam bill encourages police to alter or destroy evidence when it makes them look bad, that’s the whole purpose of the bill.

    How does this affect gun owners and out of state licensed carriers in Illinois? Say you’re stopped by police and they ask if you are armed. You must answer even if the cop is not in uniform, because Illinois’ Duty to Inform has criminal penalties. The cop can arrest you if you don’t answer. Then the cop demands you to identify the location of the gun and hand it over. That is also spelled out in the carry bill, you must comply or be arrested/killed “resisting arrest” because NRA lobbyist Todd Vandermyde put Duty to Inform in Illinois’ 2013 carry bill. Thanks Todd!

    State senator Kwame Raoul ran the judiciary committee that heard state Rep. Brandon Phelps house version of the “NRA backed” concealed carry bill in 2013, and the senate version sponsored by Gary Forby had Duty to Inform also. Forby is a mush-mouthed ignorant hick from southern IL who can barely speak English. Lucky for the citizens he got voted out of office.

    That leaves two traitors left: Brandon Phelps and Todd Vandermyde. Phelps will be out with the next election in 2018, and Vandermyde will be going down on criminal charges just like his old boss William Dugan at the Intl. Union of Operating Engineers local 150 in Countryside. One day soon Otis McDonald will be able to rest in peace.

    Watch for Vandermyde & NRA/ILA to collude with Kwame Raoul and sell out gun owners to the anti-gun police unions. They “worked” together before on the concealed carry bill. Kwame Raoul, the NRA, and the police unions are all on the same side: against you.

    • I’m sure Madigan will take care of you way better. Honestly, do you think there would be any chance you would be able to carry in Chicago if they did not get the votes for state preemption? How safe would you feel around Chicago PD, if the city could pass it’s own laws?

      • Binder- Since the only state Reps. who opposed Duty to Inform on the record in debates were Chicago area Black Caucus Reps. LaShawn Ford, Chris Welch, and Will Davis, and since NRA’s (good old) boy Brandon Phelps refused to take DTI OUT of his carry bill, we can’t really blame Mike Madigan.

        NRA lobbyist Todd Vandermyde crawled for the police unions and handed them everything they wanted. The problem in Illinois is not Mike Madigan and the Democratic party, the problem is that NRA has rats in the house.

  12. What’s with this site and it’s obsession with Chicago crime? At least 3 other cities have a higher per capita murder rate: St Louis, Detroit, and Baltimore. Where’s all the obsessive drooling over their crime?

    • Yes, pick any American urban area that has been Solid Blue for decades and you you’ll see cultural rot, hopelessness, helplessness, multi-generational poverty, and the cause of it all: Crime. Yet, like a magician’s distraction, the problem always is…wait for it…guns.

    • If you live in Chicago, and think it;s a dandy place to live, good for you.
      For many of us (I live in Phoenix), Chicago has become the standard bearer for what’s the WRONG way to run a city with a very high violent crime rate. That’s not to ignore the others, it just means when Chicago is mentioned, everyone knows what’s being discussed.

        • “Phoenix, how is the highest population density part of the city at 27th and camelback working out for you all?”
          Actually, much better than Chicago as a whole, than you very much.
          Anyone can cherry-pick. It’s easy. The problem is this: Cherry-picking only works on those who don’t know it’s happening. 🙂

        • Phoenix has the population density of a Chicago suburb and a much higher crime rate than most of them. The truth is for every other crime statistic other than gang bangers capping each other, the crime rate in Phoenix is actually worse than Chicago. Auto theft is higher, rape is higher. I have lived for years in both places, and Phoenix has neighborhoods every bit as sketchy as the corresponding parts of Chicago. I like Phoenix a lot, just hate the monsoon season.

        • In Phoenix, if the thought of being killed today bothers you, you have the choices to either change your plans for the day, carry a big fucking gun, or both. Two of those choices are not available in Chicago without months of preparation and begging. Given the name and intent of this blog, you should be able to deduce why Chicago is being addressed here.

      • Phoenix has the population density of a Chicago suburb and a much higher crime rate than most of them. The truth is for every other crime statistic other than gang bangers capping each other, the crime rate in Phoenix is actually worse than Chicago. Auto theft is higher, rape is higher. I have lived for years in both places, and Phoenix has neighborhoods every bit as sketchy as the corresponding parts of Chicago. I like Phoenix a lot, just hate the monsoon season.

  13. Wow.

    That word salad was even worse than the usual — on three sides of at least three claims, in about three sentences. (How to count “sentences” in semantically incoherent bleatings like that quote? Is it just syntax … anything ending with “.” counts?)

    Note for the Chi Tribulation: If some casual reader with a frakking brain injury notices that it is word salad, you’ve blown it. The idea is to *seem* coherent, while spouting nonsense.

    I see the byline is “board of editors”, so that might explain it. “A camel is a horse written by a board of editors.”, someone said.

  14. Illinois, what a wonderful place. Bad police and evil gun owners are the problem. Criminal actors are not responsible, nor punished as they are the actual “victims”. Their actions are entirely caused by the system failing them. While legislators continue with that mindset, Illinois, and other liberal bastions will have crime flourish. Punish the criminals? How dare anyone suggest that. Instead let’s impose more restraints on the law abiding, for the children™.

      • Not according to NRA state lobbyist Todd Vandermyde. “We haven’t seen any problems with gun owners being proned out with Duty to Inform” he tells the retards. If you’re “one of the good guys” then the police are your friends.

        95% of NRA & ISRA (Illinois state rifle association, the state tumor of NRA) members live in all-white small towns south of Joliet. They don’t care about black people in Chicago like Otis McDonald, they just use blacks as fronts for lawsuits, then flush them down the toilet later.

        Philando Castile in Minnesota was black, so the white racist good old boys in Illinois think they will never be executed by police because the NRA lobbyist put Duty to Inform in the state carry bill.
        You will never understand these losers, because they are too stupid to have any self respect.

  15. The county and federal prosecutors don’t go after the perps because they are afraid of defending conviction and incarceration statistics that the race baiting politicians and news media with label as “racist.”

  16. Much of the problem is the glorified “Thug Life” crap in movies, tv, videos and rap. Most of these offenders are teens and 20 somethings that want to be tough. Send them all to the same jail and they will see how tough they are. There is a never ending supply of the kids. Why would you want to be poor like the family man down the street that works in a place cleaning up when you can make his weeks pay in 4 hours of selling dope on the street?
    The only role models these kids have are gangsters and that is how it has been for a couple of a hundred years.
    We need to put a 50 foot wall around those hoods and fill it with water.

  17. Slightly off-topic…. Why is there a separate set of rules for crimes involving different tools? Rob a bank, get 10 years in prison. Rob a bank with a gun and you get 20 years in prison. How did robbing a bank get to be illegaler simply because you used a gun instead of anything else?

    Focus on the crimes and criminals committing them and mete out punishment commensurate with the crime. Rob a bank, go to jail. Steal a car, go to jail. Kill someone without cause, death sentence. It doesn’t seem like it should be difficult.

    • “How did robbing a bank get to be illegaler simply because you used a gun instead of anything else?”

      Because of the greater danger to those inside the bank, and thereby, society itself.
      Simple.

      • There is no greater danger. If someone was injured, someone was injured. If no one was injured, no one was injured. If we are punishing people for what *might* have happened, I am due a few MILLION years in jail, as every single day for the past 50 years I *might* have shot someone to death.

  18. “But we also know gang members don’t fear prison now because punishments are too lenient.”

    If I remember my Cam Edwards numbers correctly, the homicide clearance rate (solved cases) in Chicago is only 15%. Perhaps the gang members know there’s an 85% chance they’ll not be punished for their crime at all and they’ll pay a comparatively small price if they do get caught.

    And btw, iirc, the clearance rate in Baltimore is 4%. That’s right, 4. Makes you wonder why they even bother.

  19. Every time I hear anti 2nd amendment people say “common sense” just want to smack em!!! Just another way of saying only military, police and my bodyguards, should have guns.
    For me, common sense is having more than one hand gun & rifle, 1000s of rounds of 22lr, 357, 38P+

  20. Meh. Nothing will get “fixed”. Arm the good folks. Bring back the death penalty. Chain gsngs and FEDERALIZE it. Savage animals should be treated as such…

    • Bring back the electric chair, no more putting them down like an animals, couple of shots and just drift away! Ted Bundy’s legs buckled walking to execution, then 60 seconds of sheer agony. They throw the the switch a number of times, to make sure dead. His victims did not go quickly or painlessly.

  21. While the article goes on about harsher sentences, they ignore what is really going on. Plea bargains result in much lower sentences and plea bargains result in many gun crimes being dropped. Most gun crimes and killings involve people that have already convicted of crimes.

    Had the paper looked at the actual sentences for gun crimes, they would have learned that very few criminals get maximum sentences. Further, enforcing the laws and giving long sentences would go far to solve the problem.

    http://www.netadvisor.org/2015/08/11/murder-in-chicago-politicians-tough-on-guns-weak-on-criminal-prosecution/#.WAzmOdxHaf0

    • Much like asset forfeiture, plea bargaining needs to go away. it’s straight up extortion: plead out or we will hammer you with every enhancement we can manufacture. Oh, not enough budget or manpower to enforce all those laws? Too fucking bad, maybe you should excise about 70% of the Criminal Code then. Victimless crimes? Get rid of them. Administrative “crimes”? Those too.

  22. “The value of harsher sentencing as a tool of prevention is debatable: Hoodlums typically don’t consult the sentencing guidelines before committing crimes.”

    For the most part it does not work and there loads of other “problems” when you go this route. Unfortunately, there are no good answers. Letting them off easy does not work and most people around America would balk at the idea of killing people deemed unable to rehabilitate. Let’s not kid ourselves. Few convicted felons (regardless of the time served) get out and become “productive members of society”. They will either commit more crimes or go on gov dole some how.

  23. ‘Common sense’ anywhere is a dying trait. To the criminal rights lobbyist disarming everyone is common sense. That way the dead victims will all be law abiding. Can’t just go around locking up your voters for a few criminal acts. (There is always the problem, by whose standards is common sense measured ?)

  24. I have a better idea.

    Chicago city “government” and the police are irretrievably corrupt.

    How about a mandatory twenty year sentence for any public official or law enforcement officer who engages in a corrupt relationship with a member of an organized gang?

    How knows, with the Chicago City Counsel and the Chicago Police Department decimated, the violent crime rate would probably crater.

  25. Natural selection is simply taking its course. Progressive polices have to have consequences.

    Have you ever heard the phrase “first world problem” when we’re bitching about whatever disrupted our relatively charmed lives? These are “blue voting area problems”. As to making this a federal issue, I don’t want them to be federal problems that we all have to pay for. If all politics are local, let’s let the locals enjoy their political decisions.

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