While the nation reacted with shock to a triple homicide in Rockford, Illinois, the Windy City kept up its grim march to 800 homicides in 2020. Not to be outdone by an amateur killing three and wounding three more, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s criminal element (and one card-carrying good guy) racked up 11 dead and 20 maimed this past weekend. Bet you didn’t see that on the CBS Evening News.
Chicago’s 786 homicides, per HeyJackass.com, for 2020 scores higher than the total number of homicides for 46 entire states for last year. That’s right: one city in America has more homicides than 46 other states did in all of 2019.
One would think with all the gun control imposed upon Illinois residents, the Land of Lincoln would be a model state for crime-free utopia. After all, Illinois residents wishing to even touch a gun must have a Firearms Owners ID card. New applications for FOID cards are taking months to process.
Illinois Firearm Owner Identification card backlogs continue to mount, bringing the average wait time for a FOID card to 121 days with more than 145,000 pending applications.
State officials blamed a number of factors for the delays, including the increase in applications.
According to FBI.gov statistics on NICS firearm checks, so far this calendar year Illinois had 6.6 million checks. Only Kentucky comes close with 2.9 million checks. Those numbers do not indicate the numbers of firearms sold, just the number of checks initiated.
Illinois State Police said Wednesday the average wait times are 121 days for FOID cards and there are nearly 145,000 pending applications as of this week. There are around 27,000 concealed carry license applications pending.
Illinois also has a three-day waiting period for firearm transfers. Gun dealers have faced high fees and burdensome regulations under the new Illinois Gun Dealer Licensing Act that has put half of Illinois gun dealers in the state out of business.
The reality is, gun control disarms victims, not criminals. But that fact seems to escape the Democrats who run Chicago and the state of Illinois. Or maybe it hasn’t escaped them at all.
Thankfully, one of the tallies in the weekend’s body count resulted from a righteous use of force against a violent offender. From the Chicago Sun-Times.
A man was shot and killed while trying to commit a robbery Saturday on the West Side, police said.
He walked in to a store about 6:50 p.m. in the 3200 block of West Chicago Avenue, pulled out a gun and demanded property, according to Chicago police.
A store employee, a 29-year-old man, pulled out his own gun and fired shots at the robber, striking him in the chest, police said. He was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The Cook County medical examiner’s office identified him as Marc Rodgers, 48, of Chicago.
The 29-year-old has a valid concealed-carry license, police said. Officers recovered his gun as well as the other man’s gun.
Chicago could use more good guys with guns like the 29-year-old employee at the cellular store. Sadly, after generations of strict gun control, Chicago still has a paucity of legally armed residents.