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STOP BY AND BUMP THE FUNDRAISER THREAD- |
Posted on 04/05/2004 11:54:00 AM PDT by neverdem
Chicago continues to have more murders than any other U.S. city -- a murder rate greater than any of the 10 largest cities in the country. Only five states have a higher murder rate than Illinois. Yet Gov. Blagojevich, who faces a large state budget deficit, threatens to veto a bill letting retired police officers help patrol neighborhoods for free.
Illinois is one of only four states that do not trust retired police officers to carry guns. In fact, Illinois is one of only four states that ban every single citizen from carrying concealed handguns. The state Senate wants to change this situation, if only for police. By an overwhelming 40-12 vote, the Illinois Senate last week passed such a bill, though it still contained among the most stringent requirements anywhere. To get a permit a person must:
*have 10 years of experience as a police officer or as a military police officer
*have graduated from a police academy or training institute
*hold a valid firearm-owner's card.
But how can anyone oppose letting retired police carry guns? We trust police when they are on the job. Research, including my own, shows that police are the single most important factor for reducing crime. But somehow, an officer we trusted for 10 years is no longer trusted the day he retires.
Blagojevich's concern? He claims that adopting the bill will lead ''inexorably toward concealed carry laws'' for all Illinois residents. Obviously, ''slippery slopes'' are not just the concerns of those want to keep guns.
Don't worry though. Illinois isn't going to become like its neighbors -- Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Missouri or Iowa -- any time soon. Surely not another Indiana, where any law-abiding citizen 18 or older who passes a criminal background check and pays a $25 fee can carry a concealed handgun. Some 311,000 Indianans have permits, and no training is required.
One wonders how Blagojevich can sleep at night if he seriously worries that requiring 10 years as a police officer and graduation from a police academy is just a short step from letting anyone carry a concealed handgun with just a criminal background check.
Blagojevich's initial threats to veto any concealed carry bill for police changed this week to threatening a veto if military police veterans are allowed to carry guns. It is hard to take this new concern seriously. Besides the obvious safety record these military police have demonstrated with guns, probably no more than a thousand military veterans will even qualify to carry a concealed handgun, and it is safe to assume that only a fraction of those would bother to apply. Illinois has 1 million veterans, but only about 100,000 served for at least 10 years and fewer than 1 percent of soldiers would have served as military police for that whole period.
Exactly what Blagojevich is worried about seems a bit of a mystery, and his position on guns is changing daily. His flip-flops are not just limited to allowing police to carry guns. Over the last week, Blagojevich first supported lowering the age at which gun permits can be obtained, down to 18. Then -- when gun control advocates got angry -- he said he will support the bill only if a large number of semi-automatic handguns, rifles and shotguns were also banned. Of course, this is nothing new. As a congressman from Chicago, he had one of the most consistent gun control records in congress, but he ran for governor distributing camouflage-colored ''Hunters for Blagojevich'' bumper stickers and promising that he would be sensitive to their views on guns.
News reports quote gun-control advocates as saying Blagojevich is purposefully trying to complicate the gun issue so much that nothing passes, thus allowing Blagojevich ''to blame a do-nothing legislature and claim to each side that he tried to champion their cause.''
All this is a dangerous game. Today even more than usual is at stake. Post-Sept. 11, terrorist threats have greatly increased the demands that states and cities cover all the possible vulnerable targets. The federal government advises us to be observant and report strange events to police. But there is not always time to call 911 and wait for the cavalry to arrive. With 40,000 to 50,000 retired local, state and federal law enforcement officers living in Illinois, this legislation could help provide well-trained individuals who may already be at the scene.
Blagojevich may honestly believe that political stalemate serves his interests, but murders and other violent crimes continue unabated.
Illinois neither allows retired police to serve as unpaid undercover cops as they travel around town, nor does Illinois let citizens protect themselves. When will Chicago and the rest of Illinois realize that when you ban guns, it is the law-abiding citizens, such as these retired cops, not the criminals, who obey the law?
John R. Lott Jr., a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of The Bias Against Guns (Regnery, 2003).
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STOP BY AND BUMP THE FUNDRAISER THREAD- |
God forbid that happens. Sheesh!
Easy, Article I Section 9
No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.
-- From Amendment 14, Section 1
That's pretty easy to do if you've seen how some of the local cops handle their guns, not to mention the "us vs. them" attitudes that many current and retired cops have. Yeah, I know they're the exception rather than the rule but there seem to be a lot of "exceptions" around here. Once you've seen a cop practicing at the local range where he managed to hit a full size human silhouette target at 20 feet twice out of 15 shots you start to pray that you're never anywhere near them when they have to draw their gun.
It's was an "exception" 10-15 years ago, not anymore. Cops and soldiers are products of the public schools. Public Education has suffered from the infiltration/infestation of LIBERALISM and it's anti-gun/anti-freedom AGENDA for the last TWO generations. It's finally beginning to sink in and take hold. I used to know street cops who were extremely pro Second Amendment. Many shoot with my IDPA club. These cops are all retiring all the while shaking their heads in sadness while they look at the young-uns'
I used to carry a badge myself, for a living. I was a State Probation and Parole Officer in South Florida back in the mid 1980's and I have seen first hand the contempt with which most cops hold civilians. It is certainly an "US v. Them" mindset! I have my degree in Criminal Justice. One of the first things I studied way back then, before I joined the dept, was that the subculture of police is very mentally sick. This is especially true when it is intensified by alcohol. They get off duty and their nerve ending are so energized by an intense shift, that no matter what hour it is, it's time for "Choir Practice" or a visit to the local "cops bar" and every big city has one if not more. It's one reason that cops have among the highest rates for both divorce and suicide.
"Once you've seen a cop practicing at the local range where he managed to hit a full size human silhouette target at 20 feet twice out of 15 shots you start to pray that you're never anywhere near them when they have to draw their gun."
This again is the direct effect of mind conditioning by the public schools. They teach (and I know, I've been a public school social studies teacher since 1990) that anybody who has a gun is inherently evil.
Is it any wonder that cops handle their guns like a snake about to bite them? Worse, many cops are ONLY cops because they went down to the county employment office and read all of the "perks" and benefits that cops get. I swear! More than a few have admitted that to me personally. Add to that an aggressive recruiting program in the minority community and a lowering of professional standards in many but not all cases. Most police academies are so afraid of lawsuits they long ago went to a PASS/FAIL qualification system rather than points so it's impossible to tell how good or bad a shot any given cop is when the lead starts to fly.
ALSO, this is the cumulative effect of the switch from the old fashioned "wheel gun" to the "wundernine" semi-auto 9mm. In the military we called it "Spray and PRAY." If you only had six shots you had to make 'em count. If ya got 17 maybe you can SCARE 'em to death. Look at those cops in New York who fired 44 rounds and scored two hits at near point blank range. That was I think one or two years ago?
This has been coming for some time. About ten years ago, we had a bunch of the local feds (US Customs, I think) show up all cocky and feisty to one of our matches. Every last club member down to the 78 year old great-grandfather whomped the living crap outta their scores. Word got around local law enforcement and not only did that make the feds the laughing stock, but nobody else EVER tried to "officially" challenge us. This despite repeated friendly invitations. We even offered to suspend the scores.
The last time I got stopped at one of those roadside sobreity checks where they stop everybody, I followed Florida law and informed the young pup leaning into my window (bad tactics) that I was lawfully armed. Suddenly I was staring into the muzzle and his finger was on the trigger of a Glock. Not only was his hand shaking, so was his voice. That scared me. I could hear his older partner in the background screaming at him, but my attention was on that giant hole. He eventually calmed down and got angry at me for carrying a gun, permit or not.
That's when I just bit my tongue and shut up. I was holding up traffic and I didn't want to launch an argument that I couldn't win on the spot. Such is the "power of education."
I used to think that if our government ever turned on us and went all "Enemies Foreign and Domestic" as was the case in freeper Travis McGee's SEARING novel, well, I used to think that the cops and the military would be "with" us and not the enemy, themselves. Forget it.
All they have to do is wait and in another generation our freedom and soverignty will just fall into the lap of the globalists like Kerry. Trouble is, I don't think they can wait. I don't think they want to wait.
...Chicago continues to have more murders than any other U.S. city -- a murder rate greater than any of the 10 largest cities in the country...
...Illinois is one of only four states that ban every single citizen from carrying concealed handguns...
yup...
Why would it surprise anyone that the criminals and their mouthpieces hate the idea of retired cops being armed, just as they hate the idea that their potential victims might be.
Clearly, former police deserve to be just as well-armed, and as often, as everyone else. And no better.
Of course, that's only if nothing happens to any of them when the messy part of the proceedings commences. When the 4-month civil war in Finland under similar circumstances between that country's *progressives* and loyalists had concluded, somewhere around 3% of the Finnish population perished, many in executions following capture.
Extrapolating that into current US population figures, and figuring a likely somewhat more protracted period of similar conflict, a figure of around 5% of the 2000 census population figure of 281,421,906 would likely not be excessive.
The nature of the Finnish civil war is illustrated by the fact that less than 7,000 of the victims were killed in battle (3,100 Whites and 3,600 Reds). The rest went in executions (1,600 perpetrated by the Reds, 8,300 by the Whites) or died in the prison camps set up by the victors (13,000). Thousands disappeared.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Chicago even ban posession of handguns, much less carrying?
Not quite. When you turn in your CPD badge in Chicago, you get back a *retired* badge that's yours to keep. So long as the owner remains alive, the old numvber isn't reeissued to a rookie, other than when it's to a family member or other carrying on a family tradition. There've been three generations of Chicago cops wear the same badge number, though redesigns of the CPD shield over the years, including a change of the center seal in 1927 and a reworked shapes in 1955 and the early 1970s.
Note the engraved *retired* *flag* across the CPD badge top. There are also versions that show the years of service, 1955-1981, for example.
I don't recall if CPD still gives its officers their old service handgun in retirement, but in the 1970s they did. And when they switched over to semiautos [as the Illinois State Police did in the 1960s, first state police agency to issue a 9mm semiauto, the S&W M39] CPD officers were able to buy and keep their old 6-guns for off-duty carry and use.
Back in the 1960s, there was an Ohio attorney general's ruling that essentially did just that. You shoulda heard the squawking about how much danger they were in- like the rest of us.
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