Obama's Chicago Is Now Murder Capital Of U.S., FBI Says
Posted with permission from Investor's Business Daily
Gun Crime: FBI statistics show Chicago, with one-third the population, passing New York City in the number of murders in 2012. Is it time for a national conversation about gang control vs. gun control?
President Obama doesn't often mention his hometown when he talks about gun control. Then he'd have to explain, in arguably the most gun-restricted big city in America in the last state to allow concealed carry of firearms, why Chicago is now officially the murder capital of the United States.
In new statistics released Monday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported 500 murders in Chicago in 2012, up sharply from the 431 in 2011. New York reported 419 murders last year, compared with 515 in 2011. Others put Chicago's total as high as 532, but the fact is the carnage now leads the nation with more people murdered in the Windy City in the first two weeks of September than were murdered at the Washington Navy Yard. Through Wednesday, Chicago had suffered 21 homicides in September.
On Tuesday, Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, an avid gun-control advocate and opponent of Illinois' concealed carry law, held another of what has become a series of press conferences displaying guns seized by Chicago cops — some 5,095 in the first 37 weeks of 2013 — along with a lecture on crime and gun control. But he inadvertently found common ground with Second Amendment defenders when he noted that while guns are being seized, the gun criminals are often allowed to go free.
"We seize nine guns for every one that the NYPD seizes," McCarthy said. "That's not success that we're talking about," he added. "We're talking about the fact that they shouldn't be here in the first place and when we arrest those people — they don't go to jail."
McCarthy had a specific case in mind, that of Chicago teenager Hadiya Pendleton. The 15-year-old Pendleton was gunned down in Chicago's Kenwood neighborhood, a few blocks from the high school she attended and a few days after she performed with her high school band at Obama's inauguration. The park where she was killed is less than a mile from the president's home in Kenwood.
"The alleged killer of Hadiya Pendleton should have been incarcerated for illegal possession of a firearm when he killed her," McCarthy noted, and he was right. Michael Ward received probation in January 2012 for aggravated unlawful use of a weapon. He was still on probation for the felony gun possession offense when he allegedly shot Hadiya to death on Jan. 29.
The state of New York passed a 3-1/2-year mandatory minimum sentence for illegal gun possession in 2007. The following year, NFL star Plaxico Burress was arrested after a handgun he was carrying accidentally discharged and shot him. Burress pleaded guilty to a lesser offense and was hit with a two-year jail term, drawing national attention to New York City as a place that cracks down on illegal gun possession.
When President Obama visited his hometown in February, he paid homage to Pendleton, saying the steady flow of murders there was "the equivalent of a Newtown every four months." But instead of demanding predators be punished, he pushed for disarming potential victims, blaming guns and not the gangs that riddle his city.
The president didn't mention that Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) shows that the Northern Illinois district that includes Chicago ranked dead last, 90th out of 90, in prosecutions of federal weapons crimes per capita in 2012.
How about pushing longer and mandatory minimum sentences as a "common sense restriction" on gun violence, Mr. President? And you can start with your hometown, murder capital of America.