Well, here we go again. We have been trying to make society understand for many years now that enacting new “Common Sense Gun Laws” does not keep the firearms out of the criminals hands or stop them from using said firearms during the committing of their crimes. One would think that anyone who is semi intelligent would be able to draw this conclusion on their own, but I am never let down by the lack of common sense that runs rampid in this country. It just goes to show that the mainstream thinking in this country is not done by the individual, but most of it is done by someone else for them. What I am trying to say is that more and more of society needs to not take what the media spews to us everyday as fact and that they are really giving the news in an unbiased manner. Major news outlets in this country are only worried about their bottom line. You ask me what their bottom line is? Well that is easy to say. Their bottom line is not reporting the truth about the news, they are in business to make money. It used to be that the news gave you what was the truth in an unbiased manor, but they have now turned that into how many papers can we sell. The truth is not always news worthy and be advised that only juicy news stories sell papers and make society more interested in news.
With all of this being said, a new study which was led by Dr. Philip J. Cook of Duke University, for example, looks at the duration of the “last link – the elapsed time from the transaction that actually provided the offender with the gun in question.” Mr. Cook and his co-authors surveyed 221 people convicted of firearm-related offenses in Chicago incarcerated in state prisons about the gun they had at the time of their crime. Now we must all remember that the state of Illinois holds a rating of B+ by the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. We must note that the highest rating given is an A. Those who are gun control advocates want you to believe that this means it should be a relatively safe place.
Even though Illinois’ largest city, Chicago, has long been an the opposite of this notion. The city if nothing else has had an even lengthier list of gun controls than the state itself, and it has also seen many years of terribly high rates of violent crime. At times it has been known as the Murder Capital of the country. It is believed that Chicago’s crime rates seem to be on a downward trend. Many are not sure if gun control has had anything to with this trend. It is also believed that Policing strategies and the involvement of the community are more likely contributing factors to the trend. Programs like Cure Violence are the main reason in Chicago in the past.
The study has found that more than 2/3 of the criminals obtained their primary firearm within the last six months of their arrest(68 percent), while 19.3 percent possessed the firearm five or less days. Of those interviewed, 22.6 percent never owned a firearm six months prior to their arrest. Of those who did, the majority (54.3 percent.) of them gained possession of the firearm through a purchase or trade. 56.9 percent acquired the firearm from a friend or an acquaintance.
The underlying issue, and more important issue here has been reported by Stephen Gutowski at the Washington Free Beacon: “The CIS respondents were almost all barred from purchasing a gun from a gun store because of their prior criminal record—as a result, their guns were obtained by illegal transactions with friends, relatives, and the underground market.” Said a different way, the lengthy list of gun control laws in Illinois and Chicago have ensured that the perpetrators behavior is illegal, it did nothing to actually stop or prevent the behavior.
The point raised by Gutowski about illegal nature of the transactions negates that simply adding additional laws to the books will not deter certain armed activity that ends up with people going to prison. This goes to what I, and many others who are against punishing law abiding firearm owners with more draconian laws, have been preaching for many years now: ” Enacting new gun control laws only effects those who are law abiding and follow the laws because those who break the laws do not follow them. ” So it is incumbent upon all politicians to enforce the laws that are already enacted to combat crime and not add more laws that will in essence still have the same affect that the laws already on the books. ” If you do not enforce the laws already on the books, why create more that you are not going to enforce?
Anyone interested in reading the NRA-ILA article, please click on the link below. Criminals do not follow laws
