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Chicago Top Cop Blames Constitution for Gang Violence Shootings
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On July 7, 2014 @ 6:00 pm In The Point | 13 Comments
If only it wasn’t for that pesky Constitution, all those gang members wouldn’t be shooting each other.
Chicago’s police superintendent lashed out at what he called lax state and federal gun laws after a violent Fourth of July weekend that saw more than 60 people shot and nine killed in a city already known for frequent shootings.
McCarthy said the violence unraveled a string of successes by police in suppressing gun violence this year. The city saw 24 shooting incidents on Sunday alone, he said, although three of them may have been self-inflicted.
McCarthy said police will continue a summer program to flood high-violence areas with police, but he said that without stronger gun laws, police will continue to face an uphill battle.
Mr McCarthy says Chicago is still on track to end the year with fewer murders than last year, but the number of overall shooting incidents is up.
So murders are down… but shootings are up. How is that a bad thing?
Chicago’s murder rate actually dropped after concealed carry laws. McCarthy is agitating for laws that aren’t going to fix anything.
“It’s just insanity that there’s such a proliferation of firearms that they’re so easy to get your hands on,” McCarthy told WGN Radio on Monday. “The studies show when there’s more restrictive gun laws, there’s less gun violence. It’s not brain surgery, it’s really really simple.
“It’s going to take us a while to fix poverty and the break-up of the family units and education and jobs. But we can do something about gun laws today and we’re just not doing it.”
That may be an uphill climb: In February, a federal judge struck down Chicago’s ban on gun sales, saying it went “too far in outright banning legal buyers and legal dealers from engaging in lawful acquisitions.” And in 2010, the Supreme Court declared Chicago’s 28-year-old handgun ban unconstitutional.
Gang members are not going to lose their guns. McCarthy claims that the difference between Chicago and New York lies is gun laws.
That’s nonsense.
Chicago has far more gang members than New York. We’re talking tens of thousands. Chicago also has a whole bunch of other social problems and it hasn’t benefited from New York’s aggressive Giuliani era policing. (That’s going away under Red Bill de Blasio.)
Gang members will always get their hands on guns. It’s ordinary people who benefit from concealed carry. Yes gun laws make it easier to prosecute gang members, but it’s a small scale solution to a big problem.
If you have a thousand gang members, gun laws can make a dent. If you have 75,000 gang members, then you’re plunking away at a mass invasion. Gun laws will make arrests more convenient, but the problem is so severe that it’s better to let people defend themselves.
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