Morbidly Stupid Government, Morbidly Stupid Gun Laws

We have a dishonest government that is shockingly inept on many levels. The report from the National Safety Council revealed that drug overdose has now overtaken car crashes as the top cause of accidental deaths in the U.S. killing more than 42,000 people in 2014. Yet, we have had the “war on drugs,” an obvious, miserable failure despite throwing buckets of tax dollars at the problem, an illegal industry that has no constitutional protection.

Way, way down on the list is deaths from guns. The so-called “gun problem” can be addressed in large measure by merely convincing people not to kill themselves. According to the National Academy Press in 2013, 11,208 homicides but 21,175 suicides. Of the 2,596,993 total deaths in the US in 2013, 1.3% were related to firearms. About two-thirds of the situation would be eliminated if people didn't decide to kill themselves.

Of the total deaths in the United States, roughly 0.43% are gun-related homicides. Let that sink in for a bit: less than one half of one percent of the total deaths in the United States. Of course, we don't want any. We don't have to look any farther than Chicago, the murder capital of Illinois. The city of Chicago recorded 762 homicides in 2016 — an average of two murders per day, the most killings in the city for two decades and more than New York and Los Angeles combined.

The problem is not NRA members or concealed carry permit holders, nor is it the so-called “assault rifles” or standard capacity magazines, all the nonsense our feckless government likes to debate about. It is largely a gang problem, with some 57 gangs regularly engaging in turf wars, in the same areas week after week, month after month. There is no “gunshow loophole” in Illinois, and anyone who so much as handles a firearm in Illinois needs an FOID card, the Firearms Owner Identification Card, issued by the Illinois State Police, and you cannot buy ammo without a FOID card, either. Illinois is also one of only four states that imposes a waiting period on the purchase of all firearms – 72 hours for a handgun and 24 hours for a rifle or shotgun. Illinois concealed carry laws are also among the most stringent in the country. Applicants are required to take a 16-hour training course – the longest in the nation. Clueless Illinois politicians have been making a lot of paper in meaningless firearm laws for decades. Yes, they are stupid people, really stupid people.

The solution is obvious, if you can fog a mirror or have the brains of a doughnut. Chicago, with its clueless mayor Rahm Emanuel, has a city out of control and the Illinois National Guard should have been brought in to conduct neighborhood sweeps a long time ago. The City of Chicago obviously cannot address the situation.

If you don't want gun crime, you make it clear that if you use a gun to commit a crime you are going to jail for a very, very long time. The NRA supports this, every law-abiding citizen does. It means building more prisons, hiring more guards, but if you want gun crime out of society you have have to make it unprofitable and unthinkable to use a gun to commit a crime, with distastefully harsh penalties.

It is the exact opposite approach of our feckless President, who has recently pardoned large groups of criminals who have violated gun laws and drug laws long on the books. Mr. Obama has set modern records for clemency, reducing or canceling sentences for more than 600 federal inmates, more than his nine predecessors going back to John F. Kennedy combined. The president has commuted the sentences of dangerous criminals who were convicted of gun-related charges. But then, in a stunning, volcanic gush of hypocrisy, he has done everything in his power to block law-abiding gun owners from purchasing firearms.

Highly respected criminologist Gary Kleck, Ph.D, has shown that privately owned firearms in the right hands stop up to 2.5 millions crimes per year. Gary Kleck is a member of the ACLU, Amnesty International USA, and Common Cause, among other politically liberal organizations. He is also a lifelong registered Democrat. He is not and has never been a member of or contributor to the NRA, Handgun Control Inc., or any other advocacy group on either side of the gun-control issue, nor has he received funding for research from any such organization.

In 2014, the United States lost 22 Americans in Afghanistan: there were 14 American deaths in 2016. Yet, 762 murders in Chicago, Illinois in 2016 and there is little outrage, no visible response, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel remains sea-slug stupid enough that he seeks no help from the Illinois National Guard or Federal Law Enforcement. Our out-goinh president seems far more interested in his own fake Russian conspiracies, global warming, and golf to be bothered with such trivia.

Copyright 2017 by Randy Wakeman. All Rights Reserved.