My Blog

Category: Crime

  • Downstate and Chicago, Brothers in Arms?

    It’s an Op-Ed, but it’s also propaganda:

    Mayor Rahm Emanuel was in Peoria earlier this week talking about how Chicago and Downstate politicians need to stop fighting so much.

    “The politics of the past where we used to play Chicago versus downstate is over. It doesn’t serve the people of Illinois,” Emanuel said, adding, “It’s not working anymore.”

    Note to Rahm: It never worked.

    …

    One of the biggest issues in downstate politics is guns. …

    The basic caricature is that Downstate politicians love guns and want one in every citizen’s hands, while Chicago politicians are afraid of guns and want to ban them entirely. …

    Emanuel got along great with Downstate legislators last year. … But then a few weeks ago the mayor announced that he wanted a new law to register all the handguns in Illinois. The mayor scored some routine political points with his gun-hating Chicago constituents, but he infuriated Downstaters, and the resulting explosion was cataclysmic.

    Downstaters who had worked with Emanuel just days before began publicly ripping into him as if he were some sort of evil dictator bent on grabbing all their guns. Most are now using their opposition to Emanuel in their campaigns. Ironically enough, Emanuel helped boost Downstate legislators politically while simultaneously alienating them from his legislative agenda.

    On the other side of the equation, though, is the Downstate ignorance about how deeply so many Chicagoans hate guns. Many Chicagoans are as insulted and infuriated by Downstate demands that people be able to legally carry loaded handguns on the city’s streets as downstaters are that they’ll have to pay $20 to register every handgun they own.

    So, if the mayor really wants to work toward peace, he’ll first have to find a way to get past these gun issues. And if he can do that, he’s a better man than most.

    via Chicago Sun-Times.

    Kudos to Rich Miller for pointing out how Rahm is causing the divide he claims he wants to repair.  Oh, wait… Miller didn’t do that, I just did.

    The bigger issue with Miller’s piece is his create choice of language; he choose his word carefully.  By saying, “the Downstate ignorance about how deeply so many Chicagoans hate guns” he doesn’t have to claim that a majority of people (or voters) hate guns but he can create the inference as such.

    The truth is that so many Chicagoans really really really want the right to own (most of those want to be able to carry) a handgun.  Perhaps if Mr. Miller would get outside of the liberal cocktail party set he would realize that many residents feel terrorized in their own homes.  A black minister once told me, “Many in my congregation don’t want to police harassing the folks in their neighborhood.  But they also want to keep a .38 under the pillow.”

    Most logical open minded people know that when seconds count the police are just minutes away.  A firearm is used in defense far more often than in offense.  Mr. Miller and his anti-gun friends just can’t get their heads around the facts.  They really should read John Lott’s More Guns, Less Crime.

    Concealed Carry works.  Illinois is now the only state in the union without any sort of CCW.  I’m not a believer in the “if everyone jumped off a bridge logic” but it appears that our foot dragging is making us look foolish, childish.  States like Alaska and Vermont have no laws restricting carrying a concealed firearm at all.  Florida has a very open CCW policy (they even gave me a permit;) and yet Miami doesn’t have near the gun violence of Chicago.  Compare Dallas or Houston as well.

    The bottom line is that the Downstaters have it right and the political elites in Chicago have it wrong.

  • Bus Driver Injured with Caustic Liquid by Passenger

    A CTA bus driver was treated at an area hospital tonight after a woman threw a liquid believed to be rubbing alcohol in the man’s face when the two argued about an expired fare card, police said.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    One word yet on whether Rahm’s going to demand from Springfield a Rubbing Alcohol Registry.

  • DC Metro’s Pervert Problem

    [DC] Metro took several steps this week to address complaints that it wasn’t taking sexual harassment seriously enough.  …

    “I was disturbed to hear their reports about assault and intimidation while riding trains and buses, particularly those accounts which involved our employees making disrespectful comments,” Sarles wrote to his more than 11,000 employees in a newsletter on Friday.

    Several riders had testified at a D.C. Council hearing last month that Metro needed to take harassment more seriously, recounting stories of being groped on trains and accosted by masturbating men. They said other transit agencies had put up public service advertisements to address the issue.

    The complaints became more heated, though, when a Metro spokesman told WUSA9 that “one person’s harassment is another person’s flirting.”

    via Washington Examiner.

    Wouldn’t it just be a whole lot easier to just tell the Senators that they can’t ride the Metro anymore.

  • Criminal Justice System Failing

    A man who knocked out a woman’s teeth in the South Loop in 2008 when she refused to give him a cigarette became violent again, according to police, this time beating up his longtime female companion.

    The latest attack took place Monday night in the Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side, police said.

    It was his fifth arrest since late last year. All five resulted in only misdemeanor charges.

    Derrick King, 50, was booked into Cook County Jail today after a Domestic Court judge set a $20,000 bail for him on a charge of misdemeanor domestic battery, said a Cook County Sheriff’s office spokeswoman.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    Why is this guy still on the streets?

    I think it’s time to break-out the torches and pitchforks and find Anita Alvarez.

  • Gun Owners Need Not Provide ‘Good Reason’

    Good news for those who believe in the Second Amendment:

    Maryland residents do not have to provide a “good and substantial reason” to legally own a handgun, a federal judge ruled Monday, striking down as unconstitutional the state’s requirements for getting a permit.  …

    “A citizen may not be required to offer a ‘good and substantial reason’ why he should be permitted to exercise his rights,” Legg wrote. “The right’s existence is all the reason he needs.”  …

    “People have the right to carry a gun for self-defense and don’t have to prove that there’s a special reason for them to seek the permit,” said his attorney Alan Gura, who has challenged handgun bans in the District of Columbia and Chicago as an attorney with the Second Amendment Foundation. “We’re not against the idea of a permit process, but the licensing system has to acknowledge that there’s a right to bear arms.”  …

    “In addition to self-defense, the (Second Amendment) right was also understood to allow for militia membership and hunting. To secure these rights, the Second Amendment’s protections must extend beyond the home: neither hunting nor militia training is a household activity, and ‘self-defense has to take place wherever (a) person happens to be,’” Legg wrote.

    via Fox News.

    I believe the judge not only reached the correct verdict but did so with the correct logic.  At the end of the day, our right to defend ourselves is given to us not by government but by our creator. i.e. by nature for you atheist folks.

    Before the McDonald case reached the USSC it was heard by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.  In that opinion J. Easterbrook wrote:

    Self-defense is a common-law gloss on criminal statutes, a defense that many states have modified by requiring people to retreat when possible, and to use non-lethal force when retreat is not possible.  An obligation to avoid lethal force in self-defense might imply an obligation to use pepper spray rather than handguns.  A modification of the self-defense defense may or may not be in the best interest of public safety—whether guns deter or facilitate crime is an empirical question—but it is difficult to argue that legislative evaluation of which weapons are appropriate for use in self-defense has been out of the people’s hands since 1868. The way to evaluate the relation between guns and crime is in scholarly journals and the political process, rather than invocation of ambiguous texts that long precede the contemporary debate.

    Easterbrook wrongly binds our right to self-defense to criminal statutes.  By this logic the right to self-defense simply did not exist at all until the criminal statutes were but into place.  This is of course absurd.

    Our founding fathers knew this:

    When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolves the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Law of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, …

    (You should be ashamed if you don’t know the source.)

    The powers of the earth together with the Law of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle each and every living thing to defend itself, its progeny, and its kind by whatever means available from any threat.  If you doubt this, go put yourself between a mother lion and her cubs.

    Kudos to J. Everett Legg for at least bringing the self-defense argument front a center when it comes to the Second Amendment.

  • Obama Offers Legal Backing for Targeted Killings

    The Obama administration on Monday plans to outline how U.S. laws empower the government to kill Americans overseas who engage in terrorism against their home country, a source familiar with the matter said, months after a drone strike killed a U.S.-born cleric who plotted attacks from Yemen.  …

    U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder plans to address the issue and the underpinning legal principles for using lethal force during remarks at Northwestern University School of Law on Monday afternoon in Chicago, the source said Sunday on condition of anonymity.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    What?!  This is just crazy.  The only way to handle this is the stop this insanity and issue a new policy that simply states, “The United States government does not — will not — knowingly kill any American citizen without a conviction of a capital crime at a trial by jury.”

    Look at this another way, would the U.S. allow a foreign government to kill a foreign citizen on U.S. soil?  Of course not.  The notion is absurd.

    There are so many legal problems with this that books will be written on the topic.

  • Teenagers Pour Gasoline on Boy Walking Home From School

    Is this really what we’ve come to?

    A 13-year-old boy who police say was doused with gasoline and lit on fire last week while walking home from school is recovering from first-degree burns to his face and head.  The boy was just two blocks from his home in Kansas City Tuesday when two teenagers began to follow him and then attacked him, his mother, Melissa Coon, said.

    Police have described the suspects as black 16-year-olds, while the victim is white.

    via NY Daily News.

    My initial thought was pretty simple.  Something along the lines of, ‘how horrible.’

    My second thought was a little more complex, like: ‘I guess this used to happen the other way around in the 50’s and 60’s but that still don’t make it right.  I thought we’re trying to move past all that.’

    My third thought was a little more controversial:  Can you imagine if two 16 year-old white boys poured gas on a 13 year-old black boy and lit him on fire?  What would the reaction be?  Would there be a march?  A riot?  A protest?  Would there be demands for an investigation into whether his parents were Nazis or otherwise racists?  Would Jesse Jackson show up and lecture everyone on how to behave?

    I don’t know; don’t have the answers.  But whatever we’re doing isn’t working.

  • Killer Received Unemployment While In Jail

    Authorities say a convicted killer who gained notoriety for having a murder scene tattooed on his chest received unemployment benefits while he was in jail.

    Sheriff’s Capt. Mike Parker said Saturday that Anthony Garcia, nicknamed “Chopper,” received more than $30,000 in fraudulent unemployment while in Los Angeles County jail from 2008 to 2010.

    via Fox News.

    Our government let’s these sorts of things slip through the cracks everywhere.  This story is from California; where at least someone was looking into the situation.  What do you think it’s like in Illinois where no one is looking?  My guess is much, much worse.

  • Dog Walker in Custody After Stabbing

    This is the third or fourth stabbing in the last two weeks.

    A 61-year-old man is in custody after police said he stabbed another man this morning after the two had an argument that began when the victim tried to swat the dog away in the Longwood Manor neighborhood.  …

    An argument escalated and resulted in the stabbing of the younger man, said O’Brien.

    The man was stabbed in the back and was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in serious condition, officials said.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    No word yet on whether or not Rahm is going to request a statewide registry on knife owners.

  • Gun Control Measures Advance

    Yes, this is a few days old:

    Two controversial gun control proposals advanced to the full House Wednesday.

    On a partisan vote, the Democratic-controlled House Executive Committee approved a measure requiring handgun owners to register their weapons with the state.

    The panel also signed off on legislation that would create a special 2 percent tax on ammunition, which would finance trauma facilities that treat gunshot victims.

    Both measures headed to the floor after failing to win support from Republican committee members. They said it remains unproven that such laws will reduce crime. And, they added, downstate gun owners would be unfairly burdened with the changes.

    via The Quad City Times.

    This is of course ridiculous.  I have already written on how gun control registries are expensive and don’t live up to their claims.  But I guess the gun control Nazis don’t care about such things.

    Thanks to the folks over at Second City Cop, I did not a little research and found out that in the U.S. (my previous writing was on the Canadian registry) criminals actually cannot be prosecuted for not registering their weapons.  Really?  Yes, really!

    The USSC (United States Supreme Court) ruled in Haynes v. United States that:

    Miles Edward Haynes was a convicted felon who was charged with failing to register a firearm under the Act. Haynes argued that, because he was a convicted felon and thus prohibited from owning a firearm, requiring him to register was essentially requiring him to make an open admission to the government that he was in violation of the law, which was thus a violation of his right not to incriminate himself.

    In 7-1 decision, the Court ruled in favor of Haynes.

    You see, in Illinois if you are felon you cannot get a FOID card which is necessary to possess — even touch a single bullet — a firearm or ammunition in the state.  So if you don’t have a FOID you cannot register your handgun.  However, because registering your handgun would force you to demonstrate that you do not have a FOID means that you would be incriminating yourself by trying to register.  Therefore, registration would violate your 5th Amendment right against self incrimination.

    So, this registry has absolutely NOTHING to do with getting guns out of the hands of criminals — the don’t have to register them!!

    It’s all about creating a list of law abiding citizens (including police officers) who happen to own handguns.