Posted on 06/12/2015 5:14:50 AM PDT by rellimpank
Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn has made no secret that he thinks criminals can and will obtain permits to carry hidden guns.
Supporters of concealed carry say he's overreacting, and the vast majority of permit holders are law-abiding citizens.
In between are permit holders like Darrail Smith, who has no prior criminal convictions but who police say has a habit of turning up at shooting and homicide scenes, serving as a human holster. It took months of police work before prosecutors had enough evidence to issue an unusual gun-related charge against him.
How many more cases like Darrail Smith are out there?
Milwaukee police say it's impossible to know from their records because it is illegal to reveal how many criminal incidents involve permit holders. Indeed, Wisconsin's concealed carry law, 2011's Act 35, explicitly prohibits law enforcement agencies from sorting their records by whether anyone involved had a permit.
Nik Clark, president of gun rights advocacy group Wisconsin Carry Inc., defends that practice.
"It's not going to be in the proper context," Clark said. "There's no need to expose and collect aggregate data on our members."
(Excerpt) Read more at jsonline.com ...
—thanks to a poster after the article it’s “1 person out of 242,488.”—
I can’t believe this sort of debate still goes on. I can remember reading about how back in about 1987 or thereabouts when Florida became among the first states to issue concealed permits to law abiding citizens on an increased scale, one police chief said he would arm his officers with machine guns. Along with that, the friendly neighbourhood media warned about gun fights starting over fender benders and supermarket check out line incidents. Were there any incidents like this? No. After a while, some politicians and police chiefs even admitted publicly their fears of mayhem involving permit holders turned out to be completely unfounded.
I don’t mind if criminals have concealed carry permits (or better, if all of us are permitted to carry without a permit). Criminals will carry even if it’s illegal (hint for liberal lurkers: criminals don’t mind breaking the law). What concealed carry does is allow decent, law-abiding citizens to carry too, which levels the playing field. And if more criminals get shot and killed during what they thought would be easy robberies/rapes, I’m okay with that.
What really gets me is that up here in Canada, a fair bit of the anti-gun lecturing involves about how our country should never be like southern redneck areas like Florida or Texas. Yet in places like Vermont and Maine that are well within a few hours’ driving time from Ottawa and Montreal, the firearms laws are so casual (Vermont does not require a permit to carry)and are accompanied by murder rates at the same level or even lower than Canadian ones.
God made men. Samuel Colt made then equal.
All firearms laws, local, state or federal, violate the 2nd ammendment and all should be removed from the books.
Dear Stupid Police Chief......... in your profession all those you contact are considered to be possibly armed. BTW criminals do carry guns, licensed or not.....you friggin idgit polidiot !
Reality is not to be allowed to intrude upon what liberals want to believe! You can still hear a lot of junk about how racist the American South is but if you come here to the “Cradle of the Confederacy” you can see people of all races interacting quite peacefully. It is not unusual to see blacks and whites greet each other with smiles and even hugs yet some still spread the lie about “white privilege”. The truth is that preferences that exist go always to blacks, not whites and that is very obvious to anyone who actually opens his eyes and looks rather than repeating liberal talking points. Try to get somewhere by being white and demanding your “white privileges” and you will be looked upon as an idiot. I am as white as any Norwegian or Swede and I would really like for someone to explain to me just what “white privilege” is supposed to remain in the state of South Carolina in 2015. I am unable to “check my privilege” until someone can locate it for me. The most privileged class I can see around here is black women. Any black female who has any ability whatsoever and can present herself even moderately well can get a job before a white male of similar ability can get someone to accept his resume and that goes double or triple for govenment jobs.
Two comments:
(1) When the Wisconsin concealed carry law was being passed the opponents said Wisconsin would become like “the gunfight at OK Corral”. They warned about greatly increased gun violence from CCW people. The violence never came, so they are desperate to create “hit pieces” that condemn CCW.
It’s revealing that the bad CCW guy they trot out is a gang banger.
(2) The Milwaukee Police Chief has a big problem: The violent crime rate is very high and rising. The Chief is a crazy liberal, so he won’t look for root causes. Instead, he blames guns.
Milwaukee is a liberal bastion and has long been controlled by Democrats. It is said to be America’s most segregated city and the crime is predominantly black on black.
There are plenty of gun laws, which have no impact on criminals. Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clark is a conservative gun advocate and drives the liberals crazy.
The Constitution does not debar criminals the use of arms unless they are in custody. “No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”* It does say “shall not be infringed”; permits and registration are clear infringements.
Anyone who cannot be trusted with a weapon should not be running around loose.
*No, that’s not part of the Constitution, it’s a comment on the God-given right by Jefferson proposed in the Virginia Constitution. And a valid comment in relation to the US Constitution.
I also remember that the criminals were apparently frightened enough of armed fellow citizens that they took to going after tourists, identifying them by rental cars, which had particular license tags. I recall that the state changed the plates so you couldn't readily ID rental cars any more.
Good; maybe they'll return to their liberal hellholes and not come back!
I pray so!
So, they found a rare “virgin” gangbanger that could pass a background check.
Now it’s time to start looking for three wise men among the Milwaukee police department brass.
-look to Sheriff Clarke if you want an intelligent law enforcement voice in the Milwaukee area--
You remember correctly JimRed, I was living in south FL when the CCW law passed and the media of all kinds were having daily hissy fits saying that blood was going to be flowing in the gutters when any body who wanted to carry a gun on the streets could do so. That didn't happen of course, just the opposite in fact for the entire state overall, but I never heard a squeak in the media about that good outcome. I also remember that the criminals were apparently frightened enough of armed citizens that they took to going after unarmed tourists, identifying them by the rental car license plates.
BTW, while I lived in FL I worked with a retired Milwaukee cop for a short while, and he was very much opposed to the FL CCW law. He had no stats or anything else to back up his claims about how it made FL the crime capitol of the US. What actually made south FL so crime ridden in those days was the huge influx of illegals from Central and South America. Many of them were part of South American drug cartels that were smuggling hundreds of millions of $ worth of illegal drugs through the Miami-Dade metro area and killing each other in the process. Those people would have been carrying guns even if FL hadn't enacted a CCW law, and none of them could have gotten a CCW permit even if they wanted one.
Gangs have been using this technique for many years now, even going so far as to bring along juveniles as gun carriers, with the idea that they are less likely to be searched by the police, and if they are caught with the gun, they face far less of a penalty than an adult with prior felony convictions.
However, the police are very aware of this trick as well. So if they search the adults, they also search the juveniles, and they carefully check the gun for DNA, far more likely to turn up after a shooting. Then they just test the adult’s hand for gunpowder residue.
This is more a bad reflection on the Milwaukee police than an effective attack on CCW permit holders.
The cops knew this guy was a gangbanger and he was there at the scene of several crimes. If they were good cops, they could have nabbed him for something that would have canceled his CCW permit. Instead, they essentially ignored him until he did something so big they could no longer do that.
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