“If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government…” Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers 28.
Recently, Rev. Jesse Jackson led a protest outside of a Barrington, Illinois gun manufacturer, DS Arms. Barrington is a wealthy Chicago suburb about a one hour drive from the loop. During the protest, Jackson stated that this company “manufactured death” and the guns used were the same as those used “to kill Martin Luther King and Jack Kennedy” and that “Chicago did not manufacture guns”. What he forgot to mention is that Chicago does manufacture murderers -- about 5,000 in the last decade.
Of course, Jackson has never allowed facts to get between him and a news camera. The fact of the matter is DS Arms manufactures very high-end guns for the military and law enforcement with prices ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 -- not exactly the Saturday night specials that cause so much havoc in the inner cities. DS Arms states it has no record of a gun manufactured by DS Arms ever being used in a crime.
The problem is not DS Arms or guns. The problem in the inner cities is dysfunctional fatherless families producing dysfunctional children who attend dysfunctional schools who, logically, become dysfunctional adults.
Perhaps Jackson should start by addressing the 70% illegitimate birth rates for black children. This is difficult for Jackson, since he himself fathered a child out of wedlock, not as a hormone-driven teenager, but as a supposed 60-year-old pillar of the community. He needs to ask himself if there would be fewer homicides in the inner city if there were fewer illegitimate births? If so, then why isn’t he protesting illegitimate births?
Since public schools in the inner cities have proved unequal to the task of educating those children who live there, perhaps Jackson, and his stand-in Ted Kennedy, could stop supporting the teachers unions and start supporting vouchers, the way out of the hood for poor kids. In spite of 1,500 Chicago Public School employees making over $100,000 per year, barely more than half (54%) of Chicago high-school freshman graduate as seniors. But no, for Jesse Jackson it’s the teachers unions and their reactionary approach to education -- now and forever.
And jobs -- Jackson is against Wal-Mart opening a store with 500 jobs in the Chicago inner city and thus driving them right over the city border. Five thousand people applied for those 500 jobs, but Jackson thought they were unworthy.
So, Jesse Jackson refuses to address 70% illegitimacy, refuses to allow poor families to choose their schools, refuses to allow legitimate businesses to open and hire unemployed poor people, but yet he claims he is a man of the people. I claim Jesse Jackson the millionaire is a hypocrite.
As for guns, recent FBI statistics for 2006 (fbi.gov/ucr, tables 2, 3, 5) show that blacks perpetrate 55% of U.S. homicides where the race of the perpetrator is known. And 90% of those homicides are black on black homicides. That means without black on black homicides, the U.S. homicide rate ranks between Portugal and France -- very European like.
This also shows that cab drivers, whether black, Asian, Hispanic or white, who refuse to pick up young male blacks in the middle of the night, are showing rational behavior, not racist behavior. Based upon the FBI statistics, black men are nine times as likely to be a murderer as non-blacks.
Here in the U.S., the five states with the lowest gun ownership per capita (New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Jersey) on average have homicide and violent crime rates 50% higher than the five states with the highest gun ownership (Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia and Idaho).
Compare that with Illinois and Chicago where restrictive gun laws have resulted in an unarmed citizenry with a per capita gun ownership rate ranked 44th in the country and homicide rates more than twice the top five ownership states. So, one could say, based upon these facts, low gun ownership plus restrictive gun ownership laws leads to high murder rates. It is much safer to live in Idaho than Chicago -- even though guns are banned in Chicago and welcome in Idaho.
It is completely illogical for Jackson to assume that criminals, who by definition willfully disobey laws outlawing robbery, rape and murder, will willfully obey laws outlawing gun ownership.
The most interesting comparison of gun ownership is between # 1 Wyoming and # 51 Washington, D.C., both with populations of about 550,000. While Wyoming’s gun ownership is 15 times D.C.’s, Washington’s homicide rate is 10 times Wyoming’s. How much more evidence do you need to prove that gun ownership and crime are not correlated?
You will notice that the governmental units mentioned -- New York, New Jersey, Washington D.C., Massachusetts -- are long-time bastions of liberal Democratic political control. These liberal Democratic politicians and their apologists, like Jackson, seem to be unable or unwilling to provide to their citizenry the most primary of government functions -- security and safety. And by denying their citizens the right to bear arms, these so called defenders of civil rights are denying the first and most basic civil right -- the right to self-defense. They have indeed, as Hamilton said, “betrayed their constituents”.
And, of course, unlike the constituents they claim to represent, Kennedy and Jackson can afford to hire bodyguards for their self-defense.
Since there is no government provided safety or security for inner-city citizens, why doesn’t Rev. Jackson support gun rights rather than gun control. Give a gun to every law-abiding citizen in Chicago and Washington D.C. and watch the violent crime rate go down.
What the inter-city poor need are:
… Fathers for their children
… Vouchers and education for their students
… Jobs for their unemployed
… The right to bear arms in defense of life and property
What they don’t need is for a hypocritical political operative to deny them all of those legitimate needs for four decades while organizing a gun control photo op in the leafy suburbs.
Bill Zettler is a contributing editor to RFFM.org
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