Former Detroit Police Chief: It's Not A Gun Problem

(AP Photo/Philip Kamrass, File)

Unsurprisingly, a lot of anti-gun-leaning people want to blame the current surge in crime on guns. To them, guns are pretty much the only problem we seem to have in this country, at least when it comes to crime. They seem to think that if you make the guns go away, the bad guys aren’t really going to just stop breaking the law.

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This is a pie-in-the-sky idea that has no basis in reality.

Now, the former police chief in one of the roughest cities in the country is calling that thinking out.

Amid President Biden’s pursuit of sweeping gun-control legislation to curb mass shootings and gun violence, former Detroit police chief James Craig said he believes the real culprit is not guns, but criminals.

“We don’t have a gun problem in America. What we have is a criminal problem. . . Criminals don’t follow the law. They’re going to get guns, so what do we want to focus on? Getting guns from law-abiding citizens?. . . It’s not about guns; it’s about criminals who have guns, and they don’t get the guns legally. That’s the bottom line,” Craig said during a recent interview with Fox News’s The Next Revolution.

He suggested that many attempts at police reform policy have neglected the people on the front lines wearing the badge and have opened a vacuum for criminal activity.

“Conveniently, a lot of the issues are left out, and I’ve seen this: Criminals are emboldened. You talk about bail reform; it’s a miserable failure,” Craig continued. “We have to start supporting the men and women who do the tough job.”

Of course, the Biden administration disagrees, but a show of hands here, who finds that surprising?

No one? Kind of what I thought.

Anywho, Craig isn’t wrong, especially about the role bail reform is playing in this surge of violent crime. After all, you have people who are arrested and rolled right back out on the streets simply because there’s no longer any political will to charge bail. They’re back on the streets the same day, which allows them to commit more crimes.

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Couple that with the push in several places to essentially decriminalize certain activities or crimes committed by certain people and what do you think is going to happen?

Especially after governments all over this country released so many inmates over fears of COVID-19. I get why they made that determination, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t created its own problems.

When your penal system has to install a revolving door, you just might have a problem.

Then there’s the fact that there are people who don’t think we’ve gone far enough with regard to bail reform. They want more of this insanity.

Craig is absolutely correct about just how big of a role this may well have played, but the media has no interest in covering this. After all, most journalists seem to support these “reforms” and probably don’t want to screw up those efforts. It doesn’t change reality, though.

Craig called it like it needed to be called.

It’s just too bad so few people will bother to listen.

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