Did you hear the one about about city leaders who blamed the entire state of Wisconsin for Milwaukee’s increase in violent crime?

Not that these particular Democrat “leaders” have ever been accountable for the city they’ve been entrusted to protect in the past, but this one is a doozy.

At Wednesday’s Milwaukee Community Justice Council meeting aimed at addressing the spike in shootings in the Democrat-led city, Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn took a shot at zeroing in on what he thinks is the root of his city’s violence: the State of Wisconsin’s passing concealed carry into law in 2011.

“Since that law has passed, almost every single year, the number of crime guns seized by this department has gone up and the time-to-crime on our most frequently used weapons has decreased,” Flynn stated Wednesday.

“Now that’s correlation not causation, but it’s a pretty strong correlation.”

Not one to partake in passive aggressive attacks, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm jumped at the opportunity to unabashedly target law-abiding Wisconsinites. Piggy-backing off Flynn’s notion, Chisholm admitted that his office ‘is concerned with citizens lawfully carrying’ concealed weapons “in collaboration with or close proximity or directly with somebody that doesn’t have a firearm and next thing you know they’re using the lawful firearm for an unlawful purpose.”

The accusation that somehow a single law enacted throughout the state of Wisconsin is responsible for one city’s blatant failure to effectively protect and serve it’s residents is as irresponsible as it is ignorant. If the law was to blame for one city’s spike in gun violence, then we would see a spike in every city across the state.

Unfortunately for Flynn and Chisholm, the facts don’t back their absurd accusation: distinguishing their city alone as responsible for almost 75% of the state’s gun homicides.

Furthermore, these people seem oblivious to the fact that it is not, in fact, legal concealed carry permit holders committing hundreds of crimes and murders in their city, but repeat offenders and career criminals they themselves have been lenient in punishing or unable to apprehend for their unlawful behavior.

Flynn’s pathetic attempt to hold legislation accountable for the rapid decline of his city’s safety is only his latest endeavor to deflect blame for his gross incompetence. In October, when Milwaukee’s homicide rate soared to a decade-high of 124, Flynn claimed ‘disagreements between criminals’ was to blame.

“The violence is episodic and one of our challenges remains the highest number of our homicides and nonfatal shootings derive from arguments and fights between the criminally involved that aren’t related to the commission of another crime, which is a lot harder to interdict,” Flynn claimed on October 22.

Always eager to lead from behind, Milwaukee’s Democratic Mayor Tom Barrett also sternly proclaimed: “I’m very angry about it (because) I have gotten too many phone calls and messages and been to too many funerals and visitations where I have seen lives end for totally senseless reasons. We all have a responsibility to do everything we can to stop this.”

Of course that was in October, when Milwaukee’s homicide count sat at 124. Now we’re in December with JSOnline’s Homicide Tracker showing the count at 142 homicides and climbing. With another homicide and two shootings occurring in Milwaukee overnight*, city leaders should have used Wednesday’s meeting to identify the problem rather than as a platform of anti-gun rhetoric and fear mongering.

The only correlation to be made on this issue is that the overwhelming majority of violent crime in the state of Wisconsin takes place in the Democrat-run city of Milwaukee.

*No arrests had been reported as of Thursday morning.