In my great home state of Lambeau Field, Miller beer and cheese curds, we have the very liberal, progressive cities of Madison and Milwaukee… then we have the rest of the Dairy State.
Milwaukee County is no exception. We have the very progressive, urban city of Milwaukee, then we have the rest of the county. The law enforcement officials of these two polar opposites are a great example of their vast differences despite their close proximity. Milwaukee County has the no-nonsense leadership of Sheriff David Clarke, Jr. and the city of Milwaukee has the excuses of MPD Chief Ed Flynn.
The city of Milwaukee continues to rapidly decline, and in September, the Police Department announced Milwaukee’s per-capita homicide rate was significantly higher than the homicide rate of the city of Chicago. With a staggering 145 homicides already this year, the city hasn’t been this deadly since July 1991, the same year 11 dismembered bodies were found in Jeffrey Dahmer’s Milwaukee apartment.
Recently, in an attempt to shed some light on the root of his city’s troubles and deflect blame away from his own desk, Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn once again attempted to throw the law-abiding citizens of Wisconsin under the bus.
“I can tell you anecdotally we’re seeing a number of shootings involving concealed-carry permit holders—many of whom have extensive criminal records.” Flynn said. “But I’m not allowed to tell you how many or whom, because the law has been carefully written to prevent analysis of that information.”
In Wisconsin, you cannot get a concealed-carry permit if you have “an extensive criminal record”. In completing the Wisconsin CCP application, before sending it off to be reviewed by the Wisconsin Department of Justice, applicants must sign the following:
I affirm, in accordance with s. 175.60(5)(a) of the Wisconsin Statutes, that: (1) I have read and understand the license requirements; AND (2) I state that the information in this application and any document submitted with the application are true and complete to the best of my knowledge. I understand that I am ineligible to apply for a concealed carry license if any of the restrictions in s. 175.60(3) apply to me. I understand I may be prosecuted if I intentionally give false information on the application or submit any falsified document. The penalty for making a false statement is a fine of up to $10,000, imprisonment of up to 9 months, or both [s. 946.32(2), Wis. Stats.] and for falsifying a document a fine of up to $10,000, imprisonment up to 9 months, or both [s. 943.38, Wis. Stats.]
“I’m not aware of evidence of statistical significance that there are people who gain a permit who are committing crime with guns,” said Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel. “We only give permits to people who are law-abiding, who have no record of anything that disqualifies them from seeking that firearm, and those people don’t tend to commit crimes with the guns.”
What we do know is that since the concealed carry law went into effect in 2011, only 1 percent of permit holders have been revoked, a total of just over 3,500 individuals.
More than 1,200 of those were due to the person moving out of state. 1,000 were due to criminal convictions. Others included those who became or were discovered to be fugitives from justice (63) and those involuntarily committed for mental health treatment (58).
Indeed, if Flynn’s improbable hypothesis is correct, I’d love to know how he was able to get to it since police have failed to make an arrest in 66% of the murders committed with a firearm in Milwaukee this year. We’re talking about 77 out of 117 suspects Flynn can’t even arrest, much less determine whether or not they are indeed a concealed carry permit holder.
“Any fluctuations in crime, increase or otherwise, involve individuals utilizing guns who don’t have the lawful ability to do so,” said James Palmer, Executive Director of the 10,000-member Wisconsin Professional Police Association.
Flynn’s irresponsible and patently false statement also caught the attention of Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who responded with the following statement to America’s 1st Freedom:
This anti-gun liberal is doing what liberals do best. Blame the law-abiding citizen for incidents of violent crime. He knows no shame as he manufactures fake news about concealed-carry permit holders.
To date, Milwaukee has had 138 homicides, compared to 145 in 2015. This is one of the highest per-capita homicide rates in the country. Many of these are senseless killings in drive-bys; drug- and gang-related incidents; instances of domestic violence; and innocent people becoming caught in a crossfire. You can count on one hand the number of these involving a concealed-carry permit, and of those, most involved self-defense.
These are the second- and third-highest homicide totals in Milwaukee history. That is a pattern. That is a pattern in part due to an inability of Flynn or anti-gun Mayor Tom Barrett to come up with a plan to reduce the pathologies that contribute to violence. Those are generational poverty, failing K-12 public schools, massive black unemployment, and dysfunctional families due to absent fathers. So they blame law-abiding citizens instead.
He is lying about not being able to analyze shootings involving concealed-carry permit holders. His problem is that there are so few, and most of those are justifiable self-defense.
My advice to Flynn: Fix the ghetto, concentrate on career criminals and leave law-abiding gun owners alone.
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