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What Happened to Chicago’s Murder Rate After Illinois Upheld Concealed Carry and Why it Matters

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Photo Credit: IJ Review

Photo Credit: IJ Review

In July of 2013, Illinois became the last state in the union to enact a concealed carry law. In January of this year, the state began accepting applications for permits. This week, Chicago police announced that the city’s first quarter murder rate was the lowest since 1958.

Via ABC-affiliate Eye Witness News in the Windy City:

– The first three months of the year saw 6 fewer murders than the same time frame in 2013–a 9 percent drop–and 55 fewer murders than 2012, according to a statement from Chicago Police.

– There were 90 fewer shootings and 119 fewer shooting victims, drops of 26 and 29 percent respectively, according to police statistics.

– Compared to the first quarter of 2012, there have been 222 fewer shootings and 292 fewer shooting victims. Overall crime is down 25 percent from last year, and police said more than 1,300 illegal guns were recovered in the last three months.

Coincidence? Hard to say. And too early to tell. Although, I doubt that the anti-gun crowd is celebrating the good news.

Read more from this story HERE.

Judge Rules Chicago Gun Ban is Unconstitutional (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A federal judge ruled Monday that Chicago’s ban on virtually all sales and transfers of firearms is unconstitutional.

“The stark reality facing the City each year is thousands of shooting victims and hundreds of murders committed with a gun. But on the other side of this case is another feature of government: certain fundamental rights are protected by the Constitution, put outside government’s reach, including the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense under the Second Amendment,” wrote U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang.

“Chicago’s ordinance goes too far in outright banning legal buyers and legal dealers from engaging in lawful acquisitions and lawful sales of firearms,” he continued.

Chang explicitly did not rule out other types of regulation, short of a complete ban, in order to “minimize the access of criminals to firearms and to track the ownership of firearms.

Read more from this story HERE.

FBI Ties Chicago Representatives to Zimbabwe Lobbying

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Two Democratic lawmakers from Illinois worked to help lift economic sanctions against Zimbabwe after being targeted by an illegal $3.4 million lobbying scheme, according to FBI testimony unsealed in federal court.

Reps. Danny K. Davis and Bobby L. Rush, both of the Chicago area, were identified by Chicago media as “U.S. Representative A” and “U.S. Representative B” in the case, given that they were the only Illinois Democrats to have sponsored a failed 2010 resolution to lift sanctions against Zimbabwe cited in court documents.

Two other Chicagoians, Prince Asiel Ben Israel and C. Gregory Turner, are charged with accepting millions in illegal payments from Zimbabwe officials to lobby U.S. lawmakers to remove sanctions against the African nation. Such sanctions have been in place for almost a decade due to long-time President Robert Mugabe’s record of abuses of power.

Davis and Rush were not named in the affidavit filed by FBI Special Agent Steven D. Noldin, dated July 16.

According to the affidavit, U.S. Representative A sent a letter on official Congressional letterhead to Mugabe in August 2009 requesting a meeting, saying that he had been briefed by Ben Israel, “who continues to ‘inform and sensitive African American Leadership on not only the plight of the people of Zimbabwe, but on the economic and political direction of the African Continent.’”

Read more from this story HERE.

Law Enforcement Using Firearms Identification Cards to Track Down, Seize Guns from Citizens Whose Rights Have Been Revoked

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An Illinois sheriff’s team is crisscrossing the Chicago suburbs in an effort to seize guns from thousands of people whose right to own a firearm has been revoked, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

According to the paper, more than 3,000 people in Cook County have failed to surrender their revoked Firearm Owners Identification Card, or FOID, which is required to legally buy guns or ammunition.

Sheriff Tom Dart said he thinks many of the 3,000 continue to possess firearms.

The Chicago Police Department regularly conducts missions to recover revoked FOID cards and take guns from the owners, but there wasn’t a big push to do the same thing in the suburbs until now, Dart reportedly told the paper.

Read more from this story HERE.

Ted Nugent Slams Celebs For Boycotting Florida, Suggests Boycotting Chicago (+audio)

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Photo Credit: opposing viewsRock star turned right wing commentator, Ted Nugent, accused celebrities who vowed to boycott Florida over its “Stand Your Ground” law of being drug abusers and said they might as well boycott Chicago, too.

On Andrea Tantaros’ Tuesday radio show, Nugent said celebrities boycotting Florida, like Stevie Wonder, Jay-Z, Madonna, and Kanye West, live in “a fog of denial” because their brains are “fried.”

“When you live in a fog of denial, and usually it is inspired by just a lifetime of substance abuse — you know with all the lies about dope being a ‘victimless crime’ — I think you’re listening to the victims of this dopey crime because their brains are fried,” Nugent said. “They’re either fried on substance abuse, and all of them know who I’m talking about — the guilty can feel guilty and only the guilty should feel guilty. But there’s also a fog of denial when you’re surrounded by yes men all your life, where you’re having people picking up after you and you have people serving you.”

Nugent added that celebrities might as well boycott Chicago while they’re at it, arguing that residents there are “left out of their cages to commit more brutal murders and rape and carjackings and slaughter of innocence.”

Read more from this story HERE.

72 Shot, 12 Killed in Chicago Over Weekend, Yet Media Obsesses on a Plane Crash Where 2 Die

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Photo Credit: Irish CentralSan Francisco International Airport was ground zero for national media attention as it focused on a jet crash which claimed the lives of two passengers.

Although the crash was spectacular and captivated our attention….The very fact only 2 people lost their lives in the fiery mishap should have been enough to realize many other weighty events were happening around the country.

Miracles happened that morning that prevented a far larger loss of life and averted tragedy of mass proportions….

Yet 2,000 miles away, far more Americans were losing their lives in horrendous violence plaguing one of our largest cities.

The miracles in San Francisco that prevented far more death, were absent on the mean streets of Chicago…and there are no breathless, glamorized national talking heads reporting on it.

Out of the headlines and buried on the back pages is the fact that over the 4th of July holiday, 72 American citizens were shot and 12 of them were killed in one violent city in America: Chicago, which is starting to be renamed “Chiraq” due to the violence. See video.

President Obama said if only one child’s life was saved due to his proposed gun control mandates, then his efforts would be worth it. But his hometown of Chicago is the poster child for strict gun control and has the same or worse statistics for violence as a war torn 3rdworld country.

Chicago: The most difficult city in the US for a law abiding citizen to legally own a firearm. Yet criminals rule the streets having gunfights while innocent bystanders get shot in the crossfire.

Chicago: Under one party rule for decades and the epicenter of gun violence. Gun crime so horrendous it skews the nation’s violence statistics.

Yes the crash of the jet in San Francisco was a tragedy, but in the whole scheme of things, it was an extremely rare occurrence and the loss of life miniscule in comparison to the daily violent meat grinder of violence that the citizens of Chicago must suffer with.

It is time for the media to turn its priorities to what is at the core of this violence in one of our biggest cities. Because taking away guns from law abiding American citizens is not the solution.

Chicago was awash in illegal money and violence after the government declared a war on alcohol during the Prohibition era …..Perhaps it is time to examine who profits from the governments “war on drugs” and who/what is behind that violence.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Pews Permanently Removed from U. of Chicago Chapel to Allow for Muslim Prayers

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Photo Credit: Campus Reform

University of Chicago (UC) administrators permanently removed pews from an 88-year old chapel on campus in order to accommodate Islamic prayers, according to a local news report.

Chicago NPR affiliate, WBEZ news, reported on May 23, the pews, which are now part of display at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago, were “removed in order to provide Muslim students a place to pray.”

Literature describing the artwork that was created by UC Director of Arts and Public Life Theaster Gates, also describes the removal of the pews as symbol of religious tolerance.

“The pews were recently removed from the chapel in order to offer Muslim students a place to pray, a symbolic gesture of religious tolerance,” according to an official description of the exhibit which includes a “set of repurposed pews from the University of Chicago’s campus church.”

A spokesperson for UC also appeared to confirm the reason for the pews’ removal in a statement emailed to Campus Reform on Friday.

Read more from this story HERE.

DNA Tests Reveal Nevada Man Falsely ID’d as Baby Kidnapped in 1964 (+video)

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Photo Credit: Facebook

A Nevada man ID’d by the FBI as the baby who disappeared from a Chicago hospital in 1964 has learned that he wasn’t the kidnapped child and is now on a mission to learn his real name and to find out who his birth parents are…

“I don’t know why, but it really started consuming my thoughts, like ‘who am I?’” he told the station. “. . . it really started consuming my thoughts, like ‘who am I?’”

The story begins in Chicago in 1964, when someone reportedly dressed as a nurse walked out the back door of Michael Reese Hospital with a baby boy named Paul Joseph Fronczak. The FBI looked at 10,000 children during a nationwide manhunt to find the child, the station reported.

More than two years later, a baby was found abandoned in a stroller in Newark, N.J. That child was taken to an orphanage and given the name Scott McKinley.
Later, the FBI decided that the McKinley baby was really the Fronczak child taken in Chicago…

A series of DNA tests revealed that he is not the Fronczak baby who was kidnapped in Chicago, and now Paul Fronczak hopes to find the truth about who he really is, including who his biological parents are.

Read more from this story HERE.

Armed Citizen Project To Hand Out Free Guns In Crime-Wracked Chicago

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Photo Credit: Opposing Views The Armed Citizen Project (ACP) has the objective of giving every law-abiding citizen in America a free shotgun. The organization has already made waves in Texas – next on its list is the violence-plagued city of Chicago.

Kyle Coplen, founder of the ACP, explained: “It’s our hypothesis that criminals do not want to die in your hallway. We think that society should use that fear to deter crime.”

To that end, the ACP targets citizens in high-crime and medium-crime areas. They give homeowners and single women shotguns and free training with the hopes that the guns will lead to safer neighborhoods.

Supporters of the ACP feel that a shotgun in every home will make criminals think twice about committing a crime. Critics fear that adding guns to crime-wracked neighborhoods will only add more fuel to the fire. Some of the recipients could easily turn around and sell the free guns on eBay or on a street corner in order to make a quick buck.

Read more from this story HERE.

In One Day, 20 Shot in Chicago; Officials Blame the Weather, We Blame the Officials

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Photo Credit: Irish Central According to the Chicago Tribune’s May 1 edition:

“At least three people were killed and 17 wounded in shootings across Chicago overnight as the city saw its warmest weather in seven months.” See article.

In the past, Chicago’s Chief of Police Garry McCarty, has blamed warm weather for his city’s gun violence, along with pointing the finger of blame at Sarah Palin and “government sponsored racism.”

By using this metric, if the weather keeps heating up we can expect more gun violence to erupt on the streets of Chicago. Where’s Al Gore?

According to the Tribune article, “warm weather” is behind the outbreak of gun violence, not the lack of enforcement of some of the toughest anti gun laws in the United States.

Checking statistics in different countries known for their warm weather and violence, the following stats were observed:

In Afghanistan for the entire month of April a total of 17 coalition force personnel were killed, see report.

In a recent 5 day period in all of Iraq, a total of 25 civilians and police were killed, see report.

Chicago, one of our nation’s biggest cities outpaced the violence in 2 war torn countries.

Instead of pointing the finger of blame at outside forces, perhaps it’s time for the people of Chicago to point the finger of blame at their leaders.

Not long ago, NRA’s President Wayne LaPierre noted Chicago had the nation’s toughest gun laws, yet was failing to enforce them. He noted that if federal gun laws already on the books were enforced, instead of putting even more restrictions on gun legal ownership, it could help solve the city’s violence problems. See story.

La Pierre had also called on federal officials to bring in forces to patrol Chicago’s streets in order to restore order: “We need a federal task force, if it takes 500 agents; if it takes a thousand agents, go into Chicago.”

The law abiding citizens of Chicago deserve to have safer streets and adding more laws to the over 9,000 gun laws already on the books isn’t going to make any difference.

Chicago’s violence is not due to the weather, the NRA or Sarah Palin, it’s due to the lack of will by city officials to enforce the law.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.