The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Ontological Error of ‘Gun Violence’

Posted on | June 17, 2023 | Comments Off on The Ontological Error of ‘Gun Violence’

Gloria: “Daddy, did you know that sixty-five percent of the people murdered in this country in the last ten years were killed by handguns?”
Archie Bunker: “Would it make you feel any better, little girl, if they was pushed out of windows?”

That exchange from a 1972 episode of All in the Family always comes to mind when I here politicians and the media discussing “gun violence.” My guns have never perpetrated any violence, and probably your guns are equally innocent, but liberals have a quasi-religious belief that criminals are not responsible for crime. No, it would be wrong to blame the criminals and put them in prison, according to Our Moral and Intellectual Superiors™ in the Democratic Party.

At the root of this mentality is an unwillingness to accept that some people are just bad — irredeemable, a net detriment to society, genetically inferior, social failures, a waste of oxygen. In this, the attitude of liberals toward the criminal class is something akin to the attitude of abused women toward the violent men they love: “I can save him!” Or perhaps we might compare it to Victor Frankenstein who, when the enraged villagers show up, tries to defend the murderous monster he has created. Liberals who lament “mass incarceration” seem willing to ignore the victims of the crimes perpetrated by prison inmates.

Liberals do not want to deal with the reality of recidivism. Most crime is committed by repeat offenders — career criminals who, unless they are put behind bars, will continue perpetrating crime more or less continually. The consequences of the “turn ’em loose” mentality are repeatedly demonstrated in news accounts of murders committed by repeat felons, like 16-year-old Dawnta Harris of Baltimore, who killed a cop by running over her after he was caught during a spree of home invasions. When Harris was arraigned, District Court Judge Sally Chester denied bond and put the teenager in adult jail, telling his lawyer: “In the last six months, no offense, but your client is a one-man crime wave. I’m not certain any juvenile facility is secure enough to hold him.”

Protest marches against “gun violence” are not going to solve the problem, unless the protests are aimed at impeaching Soros-funded “progressive” district attorneys whose turn-’em-loose approach results in dangerous felons roaming the streets of Democrat-controlled cities.

Consider the case of Chicago. One of the tools that police use to “stop gun violence” — because that’s what liberals claim to want, right? — is ShotSpotter, a network of audio sensors that automatically alert police to locations where gunfire happens. Would it surprise you to learn that Our Moral and Intellectual Superiors™ are against this?

In July 2022, the MacArthur Justice Center brought a class action lawsuit against the City of Chicago, the Chicago Police Department, and several individual police officers for constitutional violations in connection with the use of ShotSpotter. The lawsuit alleges that more than 90% of the time police respond to a ShotSpotter alert they find no indication of a gun-related incident and instead use the alerts to justify scores of illegal stops and arrests. The lawsuit also alleges that Chicago’s ShotSpotter policy is racially discriminatory because the system was only implemented in areas with the highest concentration of Black and Latino residents.

The “racially discriminatory” location of ShotSpotter sensors might have something to do with THIS IS WHERE ALL THE SHOOTINGS KEEP HAPPENING, but Our Moral and Intellectual Superiors™ don’t care.

Meanwhile, recently-elected Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson “commemorated the milestone [of his first month in office] on Twitter with a thread detailing what he has focused on thus far”:

Notably, there was only one mention of public safety — and it did not even reference a specific policy. This is significant because new data show Mayor Johnson has presided over a 38% crime spike over his first month in office when comparing it to the same period last year.
Vehicle thefts spiked by 153%, aggravated battery is up 17%, burglary jumped by 12%, and even shootings rose 5%. A few weeks ago, carjackings got so bad the Chicago Police Department had to issue a “community alert urging residents to be more vigilant about their surroundings and to always be on the lookout for suspicious activity when entering or leaving vehicles.”

Mayor Willie Wonka is living in “a world of pure imagination”:

Johnson is a man in serious denial bordering on delusion. He says there needs to be a better “characterization” of Chicago’s young people.
“There has been a lot of mischaracterization of our young people in the city of Chicago,” Johnson said. “Do we have individuals who have lived out their pain in the most violent ways? Of course, but the vast majority of our young people need and want opportunity.”

(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) We must note Mayor Johnson’s expression of the long-held liberal belief that criminals are really victims of society, so that murderers can be said to “have lived out their pain in the most violent ways.” Again I think of Repo Man:

Toward the end of the movie, Otto is in a convenience store when one of his punk buddies, Duke, bursts through the door and tries to rob the place.
The store clerk pulls a pistol and fatally shoots Duke. As Duke is bleeding out, Otto goes to comfort him, and hears Duke speak his last words: “I know a life of crime has led me to this sorry fate, and yet, I blame society. Society made me what I am.”

Some people just can’t deal with reality.



 

 

Category: Chicago, Crime

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