My eye caught a headline “Another murder near Obama’s home”.
The gist of the story:
A man was killed and another was wounded in a shooting early Tuesday in Hyde Park,
It’s the second shooting to happen near President Barack Obama’s home in neighboring Kenwood in about a week.
Last week 15-year-old Cornelius German was gunned down in the 5000 block of South Evans, less than a mile away from Obama’s house.
That got me wondering: how many murders have there been in Chicago since the Newton massacre.
Apparently, enough other folks ask the same question, so Slate has developed an infographic that provides a tally of murders by city since Sandy Hook.
The answer: 96 Murders in Chicago since Newtown.
Think about that for a second … then continue reading.
Newtown was horrific — 20 children and 6 adults lost their lives.
A tragedy by any measure.
An event that motivated the President to barnstorn the nation – often with Sandy Hook parents staged behind him – using the Newtown massacre to build support for gun control legislation.
I’m ok with that … except for the gross hypocrisy.
Why not some barnstorming to crack down on inner city gangs, drug dealers and other low lifes.
I guess that would be (a) difficult and (b) politically incorrect.
Go ahead and crack down on gun ownership, but how about sweeping Chicago streets and busting the hoodlums who are packing heat?
According to the Chicago Tribune “ … about 55,000 men and women — most of them law enforcement officers — are authorized by state or federal law to carry weapons in public in Illinois”
More specifically, according to the web site US Carry, “Illinois does not issue concealed weapon permits except to security and law enforcement officers. And, “open carry” is prohibited in all public areas.”
In other words, every heat-packing dude on any Chicago corner is in violation of existing gun control laws.
My hunch: those guys are pretty easy to spot.
Why not sweep them and get them off the streets?.
Now, that would save some lives … starting tomorrow.
C’mon, Mr. President, clean up your own neighborhood.
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The Homa Files 
May 2, 2013 at 3:26 pm |
I definitely agree with you about enforcing existing gun laws, although I do think that gun shows should require background checks.
Under the Bush administration there was a rather successful program called “Project Safe Neighborhoods.” It leveraged federal gun laws and federal prosecutors to send people to prison for possessing illegal firearms. It was based on a Richmond, VA program that helped clean up Richmond, which was once the per capita murder capital of the U.S..
I guess we need more air traffic controllers instead of gun law enforcement.