Shifting The Blame

“There are those who criticize any gun safety reforms by pointing to my hometown as an example,” Obama said. “The problem with that argument, as the Chicago Police Department will tell you, is that 60% of guns recovered in crimes come from out of state. You’ve just got to hop across the border.”

A report from Chicago authorities found that nearly 60% of illegal guns recovered in the city from 2009 to 2013 were first sold in states with more lax gun laws. The largest portion came from Indiana, which accounted for 19% of the illegal guns in Chicago.

Source: Is Indiana to blame for Chicago’s gun violence?  |  USA Today

Shift the blame and demand even more gun control – a typical response to high crime and police failures.  Chicago’s “authorities” are hardly alone in blaming everyone else for their problems; let’s take a closer look at my AOR, the Northeast US; one of the most restrictive areas in the country for gun rights. 

Boston, subject to the restrictive gun laws of Massachusetts, is widely considered to be the safest of the major Northeast cities.  Of the guns used in crimes or possessed illegally, 46% came from in state.  And yet, Boston police chiefs still say that number is over 60%, blatantly lying to the public.  If you bear in mind that MA has the universal background checks (UBC) so frequently demanded by Bloomberg, the large number of in-state firearms shows that people living there have no regard for the laws.  Boston’s relatively low crime has to do with its policing, which unsurprisingly was found by the ACLU to be racially biased.  Maybe they were policing based on crime statistics, and not race?  If Boston policing is neutered in response, don’t be surprised when crime upticks there. 

Also bear in mind, only 64% of handguns seized were able to be traced to their point of sale.  The ease of filing off serial numbers or other identifying markings on a handgun would lead you to believe that a majority of the untraceables would come from MA buyers who were evading tracking and felony trafficking charges.  Unsurprisingly, Boston isn’t alone here.

New York City is already subject to New York State’s restrictive gun laws and mandated UBC’s, and adds a much stronger layer of additional restrictions.  Front and center with the lies, Michael Bloomberg himself claims 90% of the guns come from out of state.  Yet, if you look at the ATF’s own report, 30% of the guns come from inside NY state with its restrictive gun laws, triple the number of any other single state, directly contracting Bloomberg.  Hillary Clinton somehow had the audacity to blame Bernie Sanders and Vermont for New York’s gun crime, despite the fact that about 1% of the crime guns in the state are purchased in Vermont. 

Yes, NYC crime guns come from everywhere, but somehow, in spite of UBC’s, the biggest number of NY crime guns come from NY State!

NYC’s proximity to other states with less restrictive gun laws, notably Pennsylvania, has almost nothing to do with where the guns are sourced from.  More NYC crime guns are traced to Virginia and Georgia, states with gun laws similar to PA but with a lot of added miles in between.  NYC has relatively low violent crime to other major cities, especially Chicago.  The city owes its success to Rudy Giuliani, his bolstering of the NYC police force’s numbers and change in its tactics, as the gun laws have not changed in that time span.  So in spite of NYC gun ownership being expensive, discouraged and extremely restrictive, and NY State having UBC’s, the cops manage to keep crime low, but NYC criminals still get guns all the same, often from within state.  But I thought UBC’s worked, right?

Newark, NJ, and Baltimore, MD, in spite of their small sizes, have some of the worst violent crime in the US.  Both states have strict gun laws and UBC’s on handguns, and obviously, handguns still account for the majority of the crime committed there.  Of course, the Baltimore and Newark’s mayors shift the blame and blame other states.    The police there are poorly numbered, and politicians are more than willing to lie or say anything possible to deflect criticism of the leadership’s inability to institute policies to properly fight crime.

Philadelphia is within Pennsylvania, and subject to PA’s relatively lax gun laws by Northeast standards.  In spite of the insistence of leaders and police there, the state laws override almost all statutes the city tries to pass.  The only real thing the city can do is make it onerous to obtain a concealed carry permit.  They don’t call it “Killadelphia” for no reason – Philly’s high crime and murder rates are the highest of any city over 1 million.  Philadelphia suffers from the same problem that Newark and Baltimore do – political leadership that has undermanned its police force and has forced its chiefs to deploy ineffective crime fighting tactics.  And its politicians, especially the mayor, suffer from the same problem as all the rest of em – shifting the blame for the police force’s failures, and demanding more gun control.

Yet, the worst of all the Northeast US cities is Washington DC.  Not just for crime; DC has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country, coming in just below Chicago for the top spot.  A federal district where gun ownership is all but illegal, of course the guns that ARE there obviously weren’t purchased there… legally.  The city loves to blame its neighbors, notably Virginia, for its gun problem.  Yet Maryland, with its extremely strict gun laws, still puts 73% of Virginia’s total number of sourced guns on DC’s streets.   DC has one of the worst violent crime rates in the nation, and like the above stated cities, the police force needs to deflect from its own failures.  Yet, on their way out the door, DC Police Chief Cathy Lanier lamented her city’s inability to fight crime, but didn’t blame guns; she blamed the city’s lax treatment of repeat offenders as the problem.  Could this mark a change in police forces not blaming the gun for a change?  In Chicago’s case at least… I doubt it.

What does all of the above prove?  That policing, not gun laws, is what makes the difference in crime rates.  Criminals will get their guns from anywhere they can, no matter what the UBC laws are.  Criminals will get their guns from states with UBC laws, cross-country, and in some cases, out of the country (check the pictures – some of the crime guns traced back to GUAM).  Of course, all of this assumes you can trace the weapon at all.   Which brings us back to Chicago. 

Remember the quoted passage at the top, where Obama blamed every single state’s gun laws, except his own, for Chicago gun violence.  Take note, that the Chicago authorities stated that 19% of Chicago’s guns were traced to Indiana, blaming that state for its gun problem.  An NY Times report did some data analysis and took a look at where the guns came from.  And, what do ya know…

…about three times as many Chicago crime guns come from WITHIN the state of Illinois as they do from Indiana!  Isn’t Illinios’ UBC laws supposed to prevent illegal transfers of firearms to criminals?  Take a look at proximity – Chicago is almost as close to Indiana as it is to the rest of the state of Illinois.  You would expect Wisconsin, given its relative proximity to Chicago, to be no.3 on the list, but, surprise surprise…

…over 250% more guns come from Mississippi, over 600 miles away!  This is because of the historical connections many Chicago residents have to the state.  What do you know, even proximity makes no difference; criminals will get their guns from any source they can.  Isn’t this what gun people have been saying all along? 

Simply taking a look at the top 30 cities by murder rate, 1/3rd of them are states with UBC’s or otherwise restrictive gun laws.  The only cities higher on this list than Chicago that I’ve mentioned are Baltimore and Newark.  The one thing the list DOES show?  That there is absolutely no correlation whatsoever between state gun laws and gun crime.  And the above data I’ve presented clearly shows that UBC’s don’t do a thing to deter gun violence.  Europe has every law the US gun-grabbers have ever asked for, and even politicians there did the same thing and demanded more gun control in response to the recent Paris terrorist attacks.  Which were, of course, carried out with weapons that were illegal even by US standards.  Gun control proponents are consistent in only one thing – shifting the blame while demanding even more regulations. 

Crime problems have and always will be the result of ineffective policing.  The policies and lack of manpower that typically hamstring city police stem from what they are given and mandated by their leadership, which in every example cited except NYC, has been democratic.  NYC was never able to get its crime problem under control until Giuliani was elected, and his expansion of police ranks and change in its tactics is directly responsible for its reduction in crime. If you’re trying to blame NYC gun laws… well, they’ve been relatively the same for over 50 years, so it wasn’t that.  Giuliani didn’t blame any other state for NYC’s crime problem, he just listened to police and implemented effective strategies to clean up the city, in spite of its size, the scope of its problems, and resistance from elected city officials.  

Chicago’s leaders and its representatives in federal government are just doing what they always do – lying, shifting the blame, and demanding more government intervention. Stop buying the lies from these false salesmen; UBC’s are not an answer to cities’ gun problems – changing cities’ leadership and effectively policing their streets is.  

What a surprise – 81% of homicides go unsolved in Chicago!

Be sure to check out heyjackass.com for statistics about Chicago’s violent crime.