Chicago Police Superintendant Garry
McCarthy speaks next to a picture of homicide victim Sergio Mora during a
press conference which he called to promote a plan to increase
mandatory minimum sentencing for serious gun crimes in an effort to
combat the city's growing gun violence problem on February 11, 2013 in
Chicago, Illinois. Last year the city had more than 500 murders. (Image
credit: Getty Images via @daylife)What got us to a time when the mainstream media thinks it’s a non-story that Chicago rated dead last in federal prosecutions of gun crimes while it earned the gruesome distinction of being the murder capital of the U.S.? Why is it that the National Rifle Association (NRA), a civil-liberties group with four-million-plus members, has to call journalists out for not reporting bloody and startling facts?
Last Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA, held up a print out of a study done by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a data-gathering and research organization run by Syracuse University, that found that out of 90 federal jurisdictions, in 2012 Chicago ranked last for prosecuting bad guys with guns. LaPierre asked, “Do you know where Chicago ranks in terms of enforcement of the federal gun laws? Out of 90 jurisdictions in the country, they ranked 90th. Why doesn’t NBC News start with, ‘Shocking news on Chicago. Of all the jurisdictions in the country, Chicago’s dead last on enforcement of the federal gun laws?’ Why doesn’t the national press corps, when they’re sitting down there with Jay Carney and the president and the vice president, why don’t they say, ‘Why is Chicago dead last in enforcement of the gun laws against gangs with guns, felons with guns, drug dealers with guns?’”
“Meet the Press” host David Gregory didn’t even shrug. He simply changed the topic with a question. Later, Gregory’s three liberal guests wouldn’t address the lack of prosecutorial zeal either.
However, David Burnham, co-director of TRAC, says LaPierre “had it 100 percent right. On a per-capita basis Chicago ranks dead last for prosecuting gun crimes.” Burnham explained that according to case-by-case U.S. Justice Department information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by TRAC, there were 52 prosecutions in Illinois North (Chicago) in 2012, or 5.52 per million in population. By this measure, compared with the 90 federal judicial districts in the U.S., the prosecution rate in Chicago was the lowest.
Shouldn’t journalists be asking why?
Consider that in 2012 some 532 people were murdered in the city of Chicago, according to statistics compiled by the website Crime in Chicago (log on here for their names and stories). Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy has said 500 people were killed in 2012, but whatever the precise number of fatalities, honesty from the media is needed for the best solutions to be found.
The TRAC study also determined that the number of federal weapons prosecutions has fallen nearly every year in the U.S. from a high of 11,015 in 2004 to 7,774 in 2012. In fact, according to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS), in 2010 of the 6 million Americans who attempted to buy a gun, about 76,000 were denied. Of those, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) referred 4,732 cases for prosecution. Of these, 44 people were prosecuted and 13 were punished.
Such numbers explain why felons who attempt to buy guns from gun stores—and thereby subject themselves to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)—know there is only a slightly higher chance they’ll be prosecuted (1.7 in 10,000) than struck by lightening (1 in 10,000, according to the National Weather Service). Also, those who take money to buy guns for felons, know they probably won’t face any consequences—not even if the guns they buy for criminals turn up at murder scenes.
In a democratically elected government, why isn’t the system more responsive to the safety of its citizens? Why does it take LaPierre to pose such basic questions? Could the reason be that many in the media are blindly blaming guns, not criminals? Isn’t this is a case of ideology trumping reporting?
Instead of manning up to these facts Chicago’s police superintendant, Garry McCarthy, has been letting his ideology trump common sense. McCarthy expressed his views of gun rights in June 2011. He went to St. Sabina’s Church in Chicago and told parishioners that the “black codes,” “Jim Crow laws” and “segregation” that occurred in the South were “government-sponsored racism.” That’s true. But then he said today’s federal gun laws are also “government-sponsored racism.” He said, “I want you to connect one more dot on that chain of African-American history in this country, and tell me if I’m crazy: Federal gun laws that facilitate the flow of illegal firearms into our urban centers … are killing black and brown children.”
McCarthy’s solution to reducing violent crime is to use the government to take away an individual right—the Second Amendment of our Bill of Rights—from law-abiding citizens everywhere, yet he doesn’t see the parallel between this position and the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws he called “government-sponsored racism”? Black Codes and Jim Crow laws once disarmed and disenfranchised people on the basis of race. These were government sponsored just as the restrictions preventing law-abiding citizens from carrying firearms for their protection are government sponsored.
McCarthy also told the congregation, “The NRA does not like me, and I’m okay with that.”
He said all that in 2011. The next year Chicago became the murder capital of the U.S. as federal prosecutors dithered. Isn’t it time he was forced to answer some tough questions?
If more in the media would ask them, Chicago residents might learn that in McDonald v. Chicago (2010) the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that whether someone lives in an inner-city or a rural county they have the same right to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment in the U.S. Bill of Rights. They’d certainly learn that while they’re kept disarmed, the criminals with guns among them aren’t being brought to justice often enough.
To this point, when Gregory asked LaPierre if the NRA wants felons charged for gun crimes, LaPierre said, “Absolutely. And we want them taken off the street. I mean, if you’re the president and the vice president, and the attorney general, and your job is to enforce these laws against the—I’m talking about drug dealers, gangs and felons that are walking around with guns in the street, and you don’t do it?—you bear some responsibility….”
If the media would only hold officials accountable for prosecuting the bad guys, Chicago and the rest of us would be better off. Then, dare I wish it, if more in the media would wonder why violent crime rates have been falling in much of the country as gun ownership has been rising, more would have to concede that freedom works.
Source:forbes