Children as decoys in gun control rhetoric

President Obama in his Chicago speech on February 15th --  part of his tour following his State of the Union address on Tuesday, February 12th -- deplored the gun violence in Chicago and urged Congress to at least vote on his failed gun bans (to get the Senators' positions on paper).  

Obama called for better community services to keep young people entertained, better schools so they can get better jobs (50% fail to graduate in Chicago), and more emphasis on family values (60% of Chicago births are out of wedlock). 

In other words, Obama and others of his ilk are demanding that more taxpayer "investments" be thrown at the problem, believing that money can substitute for the soaring fatherlessness, illegitimacy, and disintegration of the family that has been part of Chicago's inner-city life for decades, unchanged from the time when Obama was a community organizer in the same inner-city area.

But money has long been a ploy used to promote ambitious plans (social experiments) aimed at curing past inner city violence in Chicago.  Senior adviser and former Chicago real estate mogul/city planning commissioner Valerie Jarrett and her former boss, Richard Daley, presided in the mid-1990's over a massive "Plan of Transformation" which dumped nearly $500 million of federal funding into crime-ridden housing projects.  Further more, during the last three years Democrats poured another $20 million in public money into the city's public schools to curb youth violence.  Both social justice programs failed miserably.  

To President Obama's credit, he did call on the nation to do more to "promote marriage" and "encourage fatherhood, but these desirable attributes cannot be legislated through law or mandated to happen by the president. 

Attempting to connect with many in his captive audience, Obama draw a parallel between the youth in Chicago's gang-ridden neighborhoods and his own "troubled" youth.  In reality Obama's "troubled" youth, other than being born to a single mother, was spent in the more forgiving atmosphere of Hawaii where young people weren't sent to jail or murdered nightly on streets by gang-related revenge killings.  

Might President Obama's faulty and revealing parallel give some insight into Obama's attitude toward street crime, as well as his obstinate refusal to address the problem directly? Like many individuals on the far Left, might President Obama exhibit empathy with the culture and families of the gangsters who always come to their defense no matter how grievous the offense?  After all, many participating in the gun violence are his heritage and his core constituency. 

Of note is that Obama voted against the prosecution of juvenile gun offenders in and around schools as adults when a member of the Illinois Senate before his election as president.  Now as president, Barack Obama and his confidante, Rahm Emanual, are blaming Chicago violence on guns owned by law-abiding suburbanites and are directing their efforts to abridge the second amendment rights of millions of citizens. It also relates directly a public policy of going easy on so-called minor crimes while blaming others for the major ones.  Breaking an occasional window and writing on sidewalks is a juvenile crime. Carrying a gun and murdering children is something else, and must be countered with every means at our disposal.  

So what CAN be done? Chicago needs a vigorous, unrelenting effort to catch street criminals for other offenses before they commit murder which has nothing to do with proper education, nothing do to with youth services, nothing to do with more taxpayer "investments" thrown at the problem, and nothing to do with guns in the suburbs.  It instead has everything to do with young men bereft of morals and consideration of others. If the courts are not reporting convictions in a database available to the police, then those responsible should be replaced with effective judges and clerks. If the police need access to this database on the streets, supply them with the computers and communications needed to get the job done.

The two men, aged 18 and 20, arrested for killing Hadiya Pendleton, were stopped several times while cruising the streets. Ward, the driver, had no convictions, but was wounded in a gang incident months earlier. Williams was on parole for illegal gun possession. Had this information been available at the time of contact, the Williams could have been arrested for parole violation and the car searched. A search would probably have uncovered a gun, and ended this affair before it came to tragedy.  As it was, Ward handed a pistol to Williams, and waited while Williams got out of the car and fired six shots into a crowd of teenagers he thought might belong to a rival gang, thus the tragic situation: Pendleton, who marched with a band at the President's inauguration, was shot once in the back and killed.

A more effective solution is in the works.  Chicago is under court order to establish the ability of private citizens to own handguns under MCDONALD ET AL. v. CITY OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.

A decision by the US 7th Court of Appeals expands this to mandate that Illinois grant its citizens to carry loaded handguns in public, giving Illinois until June to effect this decision. Chicago's response has been to erect the same barriers to self defense that existed before, with fees and licenses which often exceed the cost of the firearm, and endless bureaucratic delays.

In every known instance, allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons has led to a significant decrease in robbery and violent assaults, because criminals fear an armed victim more than arrest and conviction. Concealed carry has had little effect on homicides, because most are ambushes like that which killed Hadiyah Pendleton. 

Even though fewer than 4% of the population takes advantage of this right to bear arms nationwide, crime nonetheless takes a hit. Even armed criminals run away rather than "shoot it out," as seen in a regular succession of videos taken when citizens offered armed resistance. Fewer than one instance in a thousand results in the death of the assailant. (Part of the training for concealed carry is that you can use deadly force to STOP an assault, but you must not shoot at a fleeing or disabled assailant.)

Democrats are still railing against Wayne LaPierre's main proposal to station armed guards in schools, and to train teachers if they so desire.  Alan Colmes of Fox News think those who side with LaPierre are schizophrenic and need help.  

As Wayne LaPierre related in his response to Obama's State of the Union address:

"It was only a few weeks ago when they [the administration] were marketing their anti-gun agenda as a way of protecting schoolchildren from harm.  That charade ended at the State of the Union, when the president himself exposed their fraudulent intentions.  

"It's not about keeping our kids safe at school.  That wasn't even mentioned in the president's speech.  They only care about their decades-old gun control agenda -- ban every gun they can, tax every gun sold and register every gun owner." 

None of these measures would have changed the course of events at the tragedies used to justify them. Yet the administration and main stream media continue to mock LaPierre's suggestions, despite the fact that many schools are proceeding in this direction. How can we deny public schools the same protection afforded to fans at football games?