CHICAGO CRIME: Premature claims of CCW credit for declining crime not legitimate

Maintaining integrity in a mud fight
Some pro-gun people claiming Chicago?

by Tim Giblin
Some of the most impressive blunders in the 21st century assault on the 2nd amendment have come from true fools—from people whose words will haunt them for the rest of their dismal careers. No one’s ever going to forget 30 caliber magazine clips and ghost guns. No one’s going to forget the Brady Campaign giving perfect scores to Leland Yee.

Sometime in April 2014, people started noticing that Chicago had the lowest murder rate in a decade, at the same time that CCW permits were coming out, and they decided to associate the two as a pro-gun statement. Everyone wants to claim credit for the decline. Let’s be perfectly honest here, though, the foremost cause of Chicago’s crime-rate swings is the weather: a cooler year, lower crime rates.

Next, Chicago is claiming that murders for which they have no starting point for an investigation are “accidents” or “non-criminal” in nature so as to not be reflected in the murder statistics. Therefore, we can’t really know what the actual murder rates in Chicago are, but from outward appearances, it seems that they are lower when the weather is cooler.

So why are people rallying around a decline in the murder rates, throwing it up on facebook, twitter, and other social media, saying that CCW is making a difference? I have bad news for those people: During January and February, no permits had been issued yet, so CCW wasn’t impacting the murder rate at that time. It doesn’t make that big of a difference statistically — it changes who gets robbed, and for the individual, it lets them go home to their families. But the majority of murder in Chicago is not an innocent victim being accosted, so we can assume CCW won’t have a dramatic change on it in the short term.

In a debate, as soon as our opposition can identify one thing that we are bragging about and prove that it’s a lie, that’s where the media will stop. They have a very narrow view of things, and they hate us. Yes, liberals hate people that take responsibility for themselves. If you give the media a legitimate story to latch on to, even if one that is truly insignificant, if it makes us appear to be fools, that story will go mainstream while all the good that we have done is pushed under the rug. We absolutely must have academic integrity to make headway.

There is nothing wrong with saying “I don’t know.” It shows our honesty and integrity. Making things up is our greatest enemy. If you don’t know, admit it and look it up, but don’t start spewing drivel, making yourself look like a fool, or they will make you their poster child.