Last week’s headlines screamed ‘62 Shot in Chicago Gun Violence’. But give or take a few victims and this could have been the headline for many weekends in that city. It’s out of control and the rest of the country knows it. And as one retired Chicago police officer said when asked by a news crew “If they counted the stabbings and attacks with other weapons, the number of assaults can easily jump to 3 times that number in Chicago on any given weekend”.
Welcome to Chicago, a ‘Sanctuary City’, where criminal illegal aliens; including deadly members of gangs like MS-13 are given protection from ICE agents trying to do their jobs and the law-abiding citizens are the only residents, who don’t carry a gun because an unconstitutional city law, which will be gone soon, won’t allow them to.
One Radio talk show pundit gave a tongue and check response to the 62 shootings story by saying “Now see? If only Chicago had gun control, there would be no gun crime – oh wait….” His point of course being that Chicago does have gun control laws – the strictest; where the good guys are considered bad guys by city officials, if they even express an interest in applying for a firearms-carry permit to protect themselves and their families from the carnage taking place on their streets. The thugs, the gang members and every other sort of human predator are walking around armed to the teeth, but those citizens who obey the law are denied the means to defend against it.
This is the world that so many big cities, run by liberal or ‘progressive’ mayors has become. They will tax people back to the stone age, chip away at individual rights of those there legally all the while being unable to stop the blood baths on their streets and giving safe havens to those responsible. A total contradiction and absence of common sense is taking place in some American cities and people who are able to flee are getting out as fast as they can.
As the now commonly used saying states “If you put liberals in charge of the Mohave Desert, it would run out of sand in a month.” In other words, in so many of the major metro areas where hard line libs are calling all the shots, the places are becoming crime infested jungles, where residents are suffocating from never ending tax hikes and yet, still drowning in debt, and the answers they keep coming up with to solve these problems are to keep doing more of the same. Their priorities are so out of whack it’s almost comical – unless you are unfortunate enough to have to live in one of those places.
How about this for an out of whack priority? The City of Santa Barbara, like so many California cities, is overrun with hard drug users, so finding the streets littered with hypodermic needles is common and it’s not uncommon to find a body lying dead in a gutter. Yes, it’s become that bad in Leftist California. But rather than increase and seek new meaningful efforts to try to solve this problem, the plan by officials is not to stem the tide of dangerous drugs flowing over the border, create real treatment programs that actually work and impose serious hard-core penalties to those dealers spreading their poison. No, they pass out clean needles. And yet, officials there have now proposed laws that would give jail time if you are caught passing out plastic straws at ice cream and coffee shops because plastic straws are bad for the environment.
So – The city will pass out hypodermic needles to make it easier to shoot drugs, but you go to jail if you pass out plastic straws to sip on a milk shake. Once again, priorities are out of whack in the land of liberal run cities as being reality challenged is becoming a full-blown epidemic.
To close, I want to confirm by writing this week’s column, that the rumors of my demise were greatly exaggerated. Rumors get out of control, I know the intentions were good and I want to thank so many of you that called, emailed, tweeted, Facebooked and actually came looking for me to see for themselves that I’m still around. It was overwhelming and I’m sincerely humbled. It was an accident; no need to mention what kind and I’ll probably be going through PT for a while. But I’m still here. But again, I thank you all for your concern and offers of help. It’s heartwarming to a person when he or she learns how many friends and well wishers they have and I’m certainly no exception. My heart has been warmed even more than the August sun has warmed the sands along the beach.
