{"id":65183,"date":"2016-04-11T07:30:08","date_gmt":"2016-04-11T11:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=65183"},"modified":"2016-04-11T06:22:31","modified_gmt":"2016-04-11T10:22:31","slug":"individuals-are-just-not-being-held-accountable-for-gun-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=65183","title":{"rendered":"“. . . . individuals are just not being held accountable for gun crimes”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonn published an article yesterday<\/em><\/a> based on this story<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 But there are a couple of points here I thought warranted further emphasis, so I’m doing a follow-up.<\/p>\n

First point<\/span>:\u00a0 IMO significantly, Chicago police are decidedly not<\/u> blaming this uptick in violent crime on fallout from the SCOTUS\u2019s decision in McDonald v. Chicago (2010)<\/em>.\u00a0 Rather, here they\u2019re pointing the finger squarely at the courts – who in the opinion of Chicago’s police effectively are running a \u201crevolving-door\u201d prison system through excessive use of probation, short sentences for violent crimes, and early release of violent felons.<\/p>\n

Gee.\u00a0 Not holding violent felons accountable for their crimes – specifically, by letting them out of prison after only a short incarceration, or by not incarcerating them at all – leads to more violent crime from the same violent felons.\u00a0 Who\u2019d a thunk that? Well, judges (and prosecutors; more about them below), lemme tell you: anyone with even a single iota of common sense could have told you that<\/em>.\u00a0 And now, the police have just told you exactly the same damn thing.<\/p>\n

It’s not that hard of a concept to grasp.\u00a0 Bad actions that have few meaningful negative consequences simply are not<\/i> deterred.\u00a0 Instead, they’re repeated.\u00a0 And running a “revolving-door prison system” through extensive use of short sentences, probation, and early release is a classic example of “bad actions having few meaningful negative consequences.”<\/p>\n

Second point<\/span>: what’s just as significant here IMO is what the police are not<\/span> requesting be done.\u00a0 Remember:\u00a0 this is “we love gun control by law” Chicago.\u00a0 But here, the police are not<\/span> calling for new gun control laws to fix a “gun violence” problem.\u00a0 Instead, here they fairly clearly say that existing laws are sufficient; it is instead enforcement of these laws that is lacking – specifically, the post-conviction consequences<\/em> part of enforcement.\u00a0 They’ve therefore called for sentencing that takes violent felons “off the street” for protracted periods – mandated by changes to those portions of law involving sentencing as necessary.<\/p>\n

Based on this last point, anyone with common sense can see that new gun laws simply aren’t necessary to fix the problem; effectively enforcing those laws already “on the books”\u00a0<\/em> is what’s needed.\u00a0 It’s a point Jonn’s made repeatedly here at TAH, but it’s worth repeating here again.<\/p>\n

I’d like to think that judges (and prosecutors:\u00a0 as commenter 2\/17 Air Cav observed in comments to Jonn’s article yesterday, near-universal prosecutor willingness to “plea bargain” indiscriminately in order to keep conviction rates up is a second, big part of the problem) in Illinois and elsewhere will “get with the program” here and actually start taking dangerous, violent felons off the street for long stretches of time; it’s within their power now to do exactly that at sentencing.\u00a0 But I’m not holding my breath – especially since there are now proposals in Congress to reduce or do away with mandatory minimum sentences for many Federal felonies. See the Fox News link (second link above, or in Jonn’s article) for details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonn published an article yesterday based on this story.\u00a0 But there are a couple of points … “. . . . individuals are just not being held accountable for gun crimes”<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[185,156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-guns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}