The Chicago Sun Times reported that August ended with 90 more homicides on the books, bringing the total to this year’s body count to 469, surpassing the death toll for all of last year, and now Police Supt. Eddie Johnson is demanding what gun rights groups have been saying for years.
“Where we need help is holding these repeat gun offenders accountable for their actions,” Johnson said, according to the Chicago Tribune. “Right now in the city of Chicago, would you believe me if I told you, pre-trial, a person who steals a pack of hot dogs for retail theft does more time in jail than a gun offender does. That’s ridiculous.”
Ridiculous, indeed, but nearly two decades ago, America’s gun rights organizations supported “Hard Time for Armed Crime.” Instead of focusing gun control efforts on law-abiding citizens, the strategy is simple: Lock up repeat armed offenders for a very long time.
The Sun-Times also reported that anti-gun Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to devise a “comprehensive strategy to attack the issue of gun violence and gangs.”
“It’s a complex set of problems that will be dealt with in a very comprehensive way,” Emanuel said, according to the newspaper.
It’s not complex at all, really. Arrest the bad guys, lock them up and leave them there. Where’s the mystery? Where’s the confusion?
Criminals behind bars are not on the streets shooting people. That would appear to be a no-brainer.
But then there is this, from Chicago Tribune writer John Kass’ report. He seems to have a handle on what one of those “problems” to which Emanuel alluded, might be.
“The people in the neighborhoods savaged by the gang wars are waiting on the legislative Black Caucus, a group of lawmakers who represent many of those neighborhoods, to get to work and do something,” Kass wrote Friday.
“Yet even as the bodies pile up, the Black Caucus doesn’t seem to feel any urgency. And their constituents should know this.
“A few years ago, the caucus killed mandatory minimum sentencing legislation that could have kept gun violators in prison for many years, rather than let them walk to shoot again. That’s the bill that should have been passed. But it gave the judges little, if any, wiggle room, and went nowhere.”
Emanuel and others with a gun prohibition agenda seem more interested in penalizing honest citizens than taking the fight to the thugs. The mayor has promised to hire 1,000 more cops, but until the outlaws are off the streets, the mayhem will continue.
