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Chicago Is Tough on Guns and Soft on Crime, and the People Suffer

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It’s the sort of gun violence that happens every day, but is conveniently ignored by those who hate guns, except in the hands of repeat violent offenders. A seven-year-old girl was out trick-or-treating with her father in Chicago dressed up as a bumblebee. Suddenly, they were caught in the crossfire of a Latin Kings gang war, and the child was shot in the neck and chest.

While the identity of the suspected gunman has not yet been revealed, the Chicago Tribune is reporting that the target of the gunfire was a 32-year-old Latin King man “with a record of drug and assault arrests.” The man, who refused to cooperate with police even though he was the intended victim, was walking among the children who were trick-or-treating. The seven-year-old girl remains in critical but stable condition.

Once again, we see that so much of the gun violence in Chicago, a city with one of the toughest gun control laws in the nation, is caused by known wolves who are out on the streets despite their criminal records. Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson is too busy fighting with Trump and promoting illegal aliens to actually deal with the epidemic of jailbreak policies allowing the worst gang members to remain on the streets. Politicians often dismiss gang violence as bad people killing other bad people, but this incident demonstrates how innocent people are often killed or injured in the crossfire.

The feds have a history of targeting Latin Kings members in Chicago on drug charges to take them off the streets when they escape justice in the state system. This was the big lie behind the First Step Act. Federal prosecutors don’t target “low-level, first-time, non-violent drug offenders” for long sentences; they target gang murderers and use drug laws (or firearms or racketeering) to get them off the streets.

The results of the federal jailbreak bill already came home to roost in Providence, Rhode Island, last month when Joel Francisco, who was released in February under the First Step Act, was charged with murder. Francisco was serving life in prison for a third drug trafficking charge in 2005 under the “three strikes and you’re out” law. However, he got such a severe sentence not because of drugs but because he was a known Latin Kings member responsible for a lot of violence in the city, including shooting a man in the back of the head, execution-style, in 1997. He pleaded no contest for that incident, so at the time he escaped full justice in the state system. The feds targeted him specifically for this reason, yet the First Step Act released him.

Once Francisco was released earlier this year, he tested positive for drugs several times thereafter and was caught attempting to break into his former girlfriend’s house armed with a knife but was never reincarcerated before the October 2 fatal stabbing for which he was arrested two weeks later.

This is the story of Chicago and other major cities as well. Politicians in both parties misleadingly parade convicts before the cameras who they believe were over-sentenced, but for every one of those, there are hundreds of people who are under-sentenced. Yet there is no voice for those victims. Hunter Best, 26, is another recent example of the worst criminals barely serving time in Chicago.

Best was charged with breaking into two homes in Lincoln Park last May and sexually assaulting two young girls in separate incidents on the same night. Surveillance images, video, and DNA testing all substantiated the charges. Yet, as always, it’s too hard, not too easy, to land a conviction, so, according to CWB Chicago, the prosecutor dropped 26 felony charges, “including four counts of Class X felony home invasion involving a sex offense” and “14 burglary counts and four sex-related charges.” Instead, the prosecutor accepted his guilty plea to just two counts of residential burglary.

According to the original charges, as reported by CWB Chicago, “the 13-year-old girl woke up when Best entered her bedroom. Best remained in the room for about fifteen minutes, kissing the girl and rubbing her shoulders as the girl pleaded with him to leave.” The second girl, eleven years old, told investigators that “the man kissed her on the lips and touched her private areas.” Yet, thanks to the plea bargain, good time credits, and time served, this man will be out of prison in a little more than two years from now.

These stories of the worst assaulters, robbers, and even murderers or child molesters barely serving time, despite massive rap sheets, happen every day. They are the stories politicians in both parties have no interest in telling. It’s a criminal’s world; we just live in it. They get the treats from the special interest groups, while we are left with the tricks – quite dangerous ones. (For more from the author of “Chicago Is Tough on Guns and Soft on Crime, and the People Suffer” please click HERE)

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Beto’s New Claim: Anyone With an AR-15 WILL Have It Taken (VIDEO)

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Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke continued to say that anyone who does not turn in the types of rifles that would be banned if he becomes president, will be criminally charged and the gun will be taken away.

“Anyone who does not and is caught in possession or seen in possession of one of these weapons of war, one of these instruments of terror, that weapon will be taken from them and they will be fined. And if they should persist in continuing to — to use and to buy these weapons then there will be other consequences in the criminal code,” O’Rourke told CBS News.

The former Texas congressman maintained he expects gun owners to turn in their AR-15s and similar types of rifles. He was asked where the funding would come from in order for the government to pay for the rifles.

“I think a mandatory buyback can be financed with a surcharge that would be paid by gun manufacturers, those who are making the AR-15s and AK-47s, and continue to sell them into our communities despite the terror that they’ve inspired and the lives that they’ve been taken,” O’Rourke explained. “I think this is — is the right way to fund a mandatory buyback, without imposing any new taxes on our fellow Americans.”

(Read more from “Beto’s New Claim: Anyone With an AR-15 Will Have It Taken” HERE)

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Gun Owners Beware: Facebook Using Photos to Keep Track of Your Weapons

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It’s no secret that technology plays an important role in our lives. Almost every single aspect of our life is ruled by technology, from smart phones to computers and the internet. That’s why it’s not surprising to know that Google and Facebook are keeping tabs on gun owners’ firearms.

According to The Firearms Blog (TFB), the two tech giants are scanning users’ pictures to look for serial numbers. They’re then creating an index of every person’s firearms based on the image scans. If you’ve posted a picture of your firearm on a social networking site and didn’t smear out the serial number, chances are it’s indexed on Google images. Simply type in the serial number in quotes and search images. What comes up?

The guys at TFB went through their image library and found images of various firearms and silencers where the serial number is clearly visible. They then typed it into Google and viola! Every image from their website showed up in the image results.

Although it’s unlikely for a random person to have your the serial number on your firearms, it is absolutely dangerous for social media giants to have this information. Facebook and Instagram are both owned by the same company. Same with YouTube and Google. When these platforms data mine this information, this creates an extremely dangerous situation. (Read more from “Gun Owners Beware: Facebook Using Photos to Keep Track of Your Weapons” HERE)

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Police Confiscate Firearms of Korean War Veteran After Waitress Mishears Conversation

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A Korean War veteran who has served in some capacity with local law enforcement for a span of six decades had his firearms confiscated and was relieved of his duties as an elementary school crossing guard last month, after a waitress overheard what she perceived to be a “threat” in a passing conversation at a coffee shop.

Stephen Nichols, 84, of Tisbury, Massachusetts, was never charged with a crime, and was reinstated to his post at the crosswalk of Tisbury School on Tuesday following public outcry. But his guns are still to be sold. . .

A waitress at Linda Jean’s Restaurant in Oak Bluffs reported Nichols to authorities, after she said she overheard him talking to a friend and believed he was making a threat. Nichols told the Martha’s Vineyard Times that he made no threats whatsoever, and that his conversation was taken out of context. . .

The Times reported that “Nichols said he was unimpressed with the Tisbury School resource officer’s alleged trips to Xtra Mart to get coffee when children came to school in the morning,” and “told a friend about this and suggested somebody could ‘shoot up the school’ in that officer’s absence, which he described as ‘leaving his post.'”

Based on the waitress’s report, Tisbury Police Chief Mark Saloio and another officer pulled Nichols off the job while he was working his shift at the school. “He came up to me and told me what I said was a felony, but he wasn’t going to charge me,” Mr. Nichols recalled. (Read more from “Police Confiscate Firearms of Korean War Veteran After Waitress Mishears Conversation” HERE)

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Dick’s Sporting Goods Scrapped $5 Million of Its Own Inventory to Dump Firearms

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Dick’s Sporting Goods CEO Ed Stack admitted over the weekend that his push to remove guns from circulation led him to turn $5 million in his own inventory to scrap metal.

Stack explained during a Sunday interview on CBS that once he made the decision to pull firearms from his own shelves, he realized that he didn’t feel right about them being in circulation at all. “I said, ‘You know what? If we really think these things should be off the street, we need to destroy them,’” he explained.

Stack made his first corporate move away from firearm sales in 2012, after the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut — he made the decision to stop selling the AR-15.

“All we were going to do was just take it off the shelf and not say anything,” adding that the backlash was a bit harsher than he had initially expected. “All this about, you know, how we were anti-Second Amendment, you know, ‘we don’t believe in the Constitution,’ and none of that could be further from the truth. We just didn’t want to sell the assault-style weapons that could inflict that kind of damage.” (Read more from “Dick’s Sporting Goods Scrapped $5 Million of Its Own Inventory to Dump Firearms” HERE)

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The Supposedly Moderate Joe Biden Wants Gun Owners to Either Hand Over Their Firearms or Register With the Feds

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Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden wants gun owners to either hand their hardware to the feds or sign up for a national registry, according to his campaign’s gun control plan announced on Thursday.

At a candidate gun control forum on the day before the plan’s announcement, Biden said that something like a national gun registry or national gun licensing was something that could be done “down the line,” but spoke more strongly in favor of “serious things” that could be done quickly.

One of those “serious things,” outlined in Thursday’s plan, is treating so-called “assault weapons” and “high-capacity” magazines like machine guns under federal law. Basically, gun owners with offending hardware will have two options: “Sell the weapons to the government, or register them under the National Firearms Act.”

What constitutes an “assault weapon,” according to Biden’s plan? Well, the candidate wants to bring back the 1994 ban with modifications: “This time, the bans will be designed based on lessons learned from the 1994 bans. For example, the ban on assault weapons will be designed to prevent manufacturers from circumventing the law by making minor changes that don’t limit the weapon’s lethality.”

Of course, one of the key criticisms of the 1994 ban was that it focused primarily on cosmetic features that didn’t affect how guns functioned in the first place, so it remains to be seen what lessons will be learned in new legislation.

Meanwhile, with his “down the line” admission on Wednesday, Biden has given more credence to the slippery slope concerns that Second Amendment proponents raise whenever the subject of new gun control comes up, just as fellow candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., did at a recent Democratic debate.

While running in a presidential field packed with further-left candidates, Biden has tried to brand himself so far as the party’s more moderate choice (despite his platform being well to the left of Hillary Clinton’s in 2016); the question here is whether or not moderates and independents will get on board with a gun control plan like this.

However, given the current state of the 2020 Democratic field on gun control — and the fact that things like confiscation and federal licensing are becoming progressive litmus tests — maybe this is what subjectively passes for moderate gun control now. (For more from the author of “The Supposedly Moderate Joe Biden Wants Gun Owners to Either Hand Over Their Firearms or Register With the Feds” please click HERE)

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Kids as Young as 8 Have Been Issued Red-Flag Gun Orders

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Proponents of “red flag” gun confiscation laws argue that they’re a helpful tool for law enforcement to keep firearms away from people who pose a clear danger to themselves or others. But what about when they’re used against kids too young to buy a gun in the first place?

According to a report at WFTX-TV, the Sunshine State’s new confiscation law has been used to take away the gun rights of almost 2,500 of people in the state — and at least 100 of those were children. According to the station’s investigation, some of those kids were as young as 8 years old. . .

One 15-year-old got an order to stay away from guns for a year as a result of a verbal threat made in a fight at school. “He doesn’t even have a gun,” the teen’s mother said. “He doesn’t have a BB gun. He don’t have nothing but you can’t just say the word ‘shoot.'” . . .

Then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) signed the state’s current gun confiscation law last year weeks after the Parkland Shooting rocked the state. However, nobody under the age of 21 can buy a gun in the state of Florida due to another statute contained in the same legislative package raising the minimum rifle purchase age. . .

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd told the outlet that the orders are meant to serve as a message to parents. “First, it’s to put the parents on notice that you got to do a really good job at securing your firearms, so your children can’t get to it,” Judd said, “and number two, it’s putting the parents on notice about your kid’s got an issue here.” (Read more from “Kids as Young as 8 Have Been Issued Red-Flag Gun Orders” HERE)

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The FBI’s Annual Crime Report Is Out, and the Anti-Gun Crowd Won’t Like It

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation released its Uniform Crime Report for 2018 on Monday, and the numbers indicate that more people were killed by knives than rifles.

The annual report touts an overall drop in violent crime for the second consecutive year, according to the Bureau’s news release on the numbers. However, the numbers specifically on homicides in the United States offer some insight into America’s ongoing gun control debate.

Due to multiple shooting massacres that took place in August, gun control proponents have once again turned their animus toward semi-automatic rifles such as the AR-15. Perhaps the most salient example of this is 2020 Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke’s pledge, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”

However, as has been the case in previous years, the numbers show that rifles in general — including semi-automatics as well as others — only account for a fraction of a percent of the total homicide rate in the United States.

Here’s what the FBI’s 2018 homicide numbers show us:

Overall, the number of homicides dropped from 15,195 in 2017 to 14,123 in 2018. The overall number of people murdered with guns dropped as well.

10,265 were committed with firearms, out of which handguns accounted for 6,603.

Rifles were used in 297 homicides, shotguns in 235, and “other guns” in 167.

2,963 homicides were listed as “firearms, type not stated.”

What does this show us? According to the available information, rifles accounted for just 2.1 percent of total homicides last year — and 2.9 percent of gun homicides.

Once again, deaths from knives and “personal weapons” like hands, fists, and feet were higher than the number of homicides committed with rifles. More than five times as many murders were committed with knives (1,515) as with rifles, and more than twice as many people were killed with “personal weapons” (672). Other years included in the FBI report’s table — which spans 2014-2018 — show similar disparities between the same weapon types.

Again, these numbers are just for rifles as a whole. There’s no further breakdown for what kind of action or cosmetic features the rifles had.

But despite the facts, the question of what to do about the AR-15 and other widely used semi-automatic rifles — sometimes referred to as “assault weapons” — will likely remain as one of the main focus points in America’s ongoing debate about guns and the Second Amendment. (For more form the author of “The FBI’s Annual Crime Report Is Out, and the Anti-Gun Crowd Won’t Like It” please click HERE)

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CEO Says Bank of America Will Now Fight for Gun Control

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Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan said the company can’t just produce profits — it also has to wade into thorny debates.

The head of the second-largest U.S. bank said Wednesday that the firm needed to act on issues such as gun control, particularly because of the impact on employees who were affected by mass shootings.

“You had teammates in every one of those situations that led our team to say we’ve got to take a stand on something,” Moynihan said at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum. Companies have to both “produce a great profit, and make progress” for society, he said. (Read more from “CEO Says Bank of America Will Now Fight for Gun Control” HERE)

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Sheriff Proposes ‘Sanctuary County’ That Will Not Enforce Any New Federal Gun Laws

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Sheriff Roger Deeds of Hoods County, Texas, has proposed turning his jurisdiction into a “sanctuary county” that would ignore any new gun laws introduced by the federal government. . .

“We’re not going to be messing with the Second Amendment,” the sheriff told audiences at a campaign forum last week.

If his plans go ahead, Hoods County will become the latest of a number of rural counties refusing to comply with federal or state-wide regulations on gun ownership. Other Second Amendment sanctuaries are popping up in states including Washington, California, and New Mexico. This is often a response from rural conservative counties to steps taken by Democratic policymakers regarding bolstering background checks and other gun restrictions designed to improve firearm safety.

Typically, sanctuaries refer to the dozens of cities and counties who have declared themselves a refuge for immigrants facing tough enforcement measures. Indeed, that is where, according to Reuters, Second Amendment sanctuaries got the idea from.

In most cases, as in Needles in California or Effingham County in Illinois, sanctuaries have been declared following laws introduced at a state level by Democratic politicians—but Deeds’ announcement in a Republican-held state appears to be a response to federal calls for tighter gun control following a number of high-profile mass shootings, including the shooting at El Paso, 580 miles from Hood County. (Read more from “Sheriff Proposes ‘Sanctuary County’ That Will Not Enforce Any New Federal Gun Laws” HERE)

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