Democrats push policies to protect criminals
Residents of cities where crime has spiraled amid deep police cuts are being denied their right to defend themselves just when they need it more than ever, say gun rights supporters.
The nation's strictest gun laws have long been in the urban centers of blue states. With many of those cities moving to defund their own police departments, violent crime is leaving an unarmed citizenry at the mercy of outlaws, one Second Amendment backer said.
"If you’re primarily disarming the most law-abiding good citizens who obey the law, you make it easier for criminals to go and commit crimes," John Lott, a former Trump administration adviser and the author of More Guns, Less Crime, told the Washington Examiner.
The gun debate is not new, but the crime wave that followed last summer's movement to slash municipal police forces has given it a new urgency.
In Minneapolis, where George Floyd's murder at the hands of a police officer spawned the "defund the police" movement, total violent crimes are up nearly 15% year-to-date, with the homicide rate twice what it was last year. The city saw a 21% year-over-year increase of violent crime in 2020.
Homicides rose in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles in 2020 by 41%, 50%, and 21%, respectively, over 2019. Other cities of varying sizes saw increases too.
Lott says it is no coincidence that crime has soared in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle, all of which have all supported or started the process of reducing police funding.
"You have had the biggest spikes in the areas where police are not being allowed to do their job either because of orders or because of changes in budgets,” Lott said. “It’s not really shocking to me that you see the increase.
...
If the police can't always protect citizens, it makes sense to allow law-abiding gun owners to defend themselves, says Lott. At least one big-city police chief agrees.
“I changed my orientation real quick,” retiring Detroit Police Chief James Craig, who was referring to how his views changed following stints on the force in both Los Angeles and Maine, said in 2014. “Maine is one of the safest places in America. Clearly, suspects knew that good Americans were armed.”
Craig, who has frequently urged Motor City residents to obtain firearms legally and get related training, is a popular and outspoken critic of the "defund the police" movement. He is mulling a run for governor.
Democrats' reaction to the disturbing trend of rising crime has been to call for even more restrictions on gun ownership.
...
Criminals may be a big part of the Democrat base, but they are also the reason Democrats lost seats in Congress and probably will again. The defund the police policy is being used against Democrats in special elections again. It is an idiotic policy based on a reaction to Black Lives Matter's anger over the deaths of idiots who resist arrest.
Melanie Stansbury, the Democratic candidate in next week's special congressional election here, spent last weekend touting Joe Biden's agenda, vowing to strengthen infrastructure and fight climate change, drought and hunger.
Her Republican opponent used the same preelection push to warn that she would be heading to Washington to "defund the police" and back legislation to close all federal prisons within 10 years, releasing infamous criminals out on the street.
“Think about who's in federal prison right now: El Chapo, the co-founder of al Qaeda, the Oklahoma City bomber, the Unabomber,” state Sen. Mark Moores told a luncheon of three dozen Republican women on Friday. "That is how radical this agenda is, and we have to stop it."
...
New Mexico voters are a mystery when it comes to supporting Democrats. They voted for Biden despite his pledge to kill oil and gas jobs on federally controlled sites which most are in the state. That policy will reduce income to the state by a substantial amount. It means fewer jobs and higher taxes, but that is the Democrat policy.
Comments
Post a Comment