Obama Wants to Take Our Guns, So We Can All Experience The "Peace" Of Chicago

As Katie Pavlich eloquently points out on The Hill: yes, President Obama does want to take our guns. In part, she writes, “Perhaps Obama’s open politicizing of the issue wasn’t the worst part, but instead it was his intellectual dishonesty when it comes to the “common-sense” gun laws he wants implemented.”

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After the shooting on the Umpqua Community College campus last week, Obama took to the airwaves to issue this statement: “We know that other countries, in response to one mass shooting, have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings. Friends of ours, allies of ours — Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours. So we know there are ways to prevent it.”

These “common-sense” and “modest” laws Obama refers to in Britain and Australia Obama refers to aren’t just lines in a law book, but would require extreme confiscation and bans. They also did little to reduce overall homicide rates. Instead, United Kingdom was found to be the most violent country in Europe in 2009. So much for that.

So let’s look closer to home at Obama’s old stomping grounds: Chicago.

In 1982, the city of Chicago instituted a ban on handguns. The ban prohibited civilians from possessing handguns, except those registered with the city government prior to enactment of the law. The law also specified that such handguns had to be re-registered every two years or owners would forfeit their right to possess them. In 1994, the law was amended to require annual re-registration.

It’s no surprise to gun owners and Second Amendment supporters that Chicago is the best model to prove gun control does not work.

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Since the handgun ban went into effect, the percentage of Chicago murders committed with handguns has averaged about 40% higher than it was before the law took effect.

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In fact, by 2005, an astronomical 96% of firearm murder victims in Chicago were killed with handguns.

In the wake of Chicago’s handgun ban, at least five suburbs surrounding Chicago instituted similar handgun bans. When the Supreme Court overturned the District of Columbia’s handgun ban in June 2008, at least four of these suburbs repealed their bans and in June 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (5-4) that Chicago’s ban is unconstitutional.

On July 9, 2013, a bill enforcing Illinois gun owners’ right to carry concealed firearms was passed and Illinois became the last state in the nation to allow public possession of concealed guns.

In April 2014, the Chicago Police Department confirmed its city had experienced its lowest murder rate since 1958 in the 1st quarter of 2014. Reporting 6 fewer murders than the same timeframe in 2013 (a 9% decrease) and 55 fewer murders than 2012. Additionally, there were 90 fewer shootings and 119 fewer shooting victims compared to the prior year, as well as 222 fewer shootings and 292 fewer shooting victims compared to the first quarter in 2012. Crime across the board was decreased by a whopping 25 percent from 2013 and police reported confiscating over 1,300 illegal guns from Jan-March 2014.

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Currently, several big U.S. cities are seeing homicide rates surge. Among them, not surprisingly, is Chicago. The windy city saw a staggering 59 murders and 362 gunshot victims in September of this year, marking the Democratic-run city’s deadliest month since 2002, according to analysis by The Chicago Tribune.

Beyond Chicago, Illinois’ gun laws are affecting other cities as well. East St. Louis ranks at #1 with the highest murder rate in the nation and boasts .86 murders per thousand residents, approximately 21 times the national average. Harvey, Illinois has a violent crime rate of 1373.8 with a population of only 25,404. The city of Rockford has a population of 152,293 but endured a whopping 2,083 violent crimes with 9 murders, 124 cases of forcible rape, 499 robberies and 1451 aggravated assaults in 2014.

But gun grabbers don’t have to let the data do the talking, when the criminals behind the data are willing to speak to us directly.

The University of Chicago Preventative Medicine performed a gun study by surveying 99 Cook County Illinois inmates which identified exactly how they were able to obtain guns. According to their findings, the vast majority of guns used by criminals to commit crimes are obtained illegally.

The best part of the survey is in it’s conclusion, which states: “it is rare for offenders to buy from licensed dealers, and also rare for them to steal their guns. Rather, the predominant sources of guns to offenders are family, acquaintances, fellow gang members which is to say, members of their social network.

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Gun crime experts John Lott, Jr. and David Mustard made the most compelling argument in “Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Firearms” which showed: “When state concealed handgun laws went into effect in a county, murders fell by 8.5% and rapes and aggravated assaults fell by 5-7%.”

Simply put: more guns mean less crime.

If Obama thinks a massive gun grab across the nation is going to stop gun violence, he simply needs to look at Chicago to show him just how wrong that notion is.

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