By Mark Walters
USA – -(Ammoland.com)- The headline jumped out at me: America’s Top Cities for Homicides Are on Track for Historic Rates in 2017.
For years I’ve been taking my advice not to be what I call a “headline surfer.” By that, I mean digging into the weeds and reading the article, column, opinion piece masquerading as news, etc. In other words, don’t judge the book by the cover. That’s exactly what the legacy media liars want you to do. Read the headline and skip the story.
Unfortunately, a lot of people do just that, but I’m not one of them, not anymore, anyway!
In this case, it sounded like a headline I would write myself when penning a column about the murder scorecard in Chicago, for example. The headline itself seemed to scream what I’ve been saying for years, that while the FBI reports Uniform Crime Report statistics have been showing a steady decline in overall violent crime for years (with CCW permits and gun ownership at historic highs), certain cities are seeing a massive uptick in murders. Obviously, Chicago immediately comes to mind. So I read the story.
Here are a few lines from the piece:
“Most of this year’s homicides in the top three cities were committed with firearms, according to data obtained from the cities’ police departments. In St. Louis, 96 percent of the 94 homicides recorded in the first half of the year were committed with guns. The same was true in 88 percent of Baltimore’s 170 homicides, and 81 percent of Detroit’s 136 homicides. The composition of gun homicides was essentially unchanged from the same period last year.”
Interestingly the article left out Chicago numbers which kind of made me scratch my head but I continued reading:
“Crime patterns dim the hopes for a reprieve. Monthly gun homicide numbers usually increase in the second half of the year, police data show. Crime in the United States, including murder, has fallen dramatically nationwide since the 1990s. But in individual cities, and especially individual neighborhoods, the picture looks different.
According to an April 2017 report by The Brennan Center, the left-leaning think tank, the 2016 murder rate for the 30 largest American cities increased by 14 percent from 2015.
Escalating levels of gun violence in some cities suggest that the national homicide rate — as well as the often overlooked rates for nonfatal shootings — may show a third consecutive bump when the final numbers are in for 2017. A Washington Post analysis of data collected by Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization that tallies shootings through news articles and police reports, found that, in the first 200 days of the year, gun deaths have surged by 12 percent.”
When I finished the article, I was shocked.
Forget the fact the writer left out the horrendous murder scorecard in “The Windy City of Murder,” more glaring to me was the source of the column: Bloomberg’s fake news outlet, The Trace. Why would that surprise me, you may ask? I cannot for the life of me figure out why the ultimate source of anti-gun, fake news would be stupid enough to point out the fact that while crime is dropping everywhere gun banners are not in control, it is skyrocketing in the very cesspools brimming with Democrat, gun-haters at the helm. Okay, I really can figure it out. Here’s a hint: They’re stupid. It’s pretty much as simple as that. To be more specific, the Trace’s leaders (who are not stupid) are playing to the lowest common denominator of “headline surfer,” swayed only by emotion, undeterred by fact and logic, who are stupid.
Sad, but true.
The headline is written in such a way for good reason. It’s designed to sway that orange, T-shirt, clad, angry mom who thinks she’s a part of a “grassroots” organization because she clicked “like” on a Facebook page. To that individual, the initial knee-jerk reaction to that headline is, “Holy crap we’ve got to do something!” That “something” turns into screaming for more gun control. Ah, by design.
Sadly, (but understandably) these “lowest common denominators” aren’t the sharpest light-bulbs in the knife-drawer. They are too dull and too dim to understand what record numbers of Americans, living in cities and other areas with falling crime rates, have already figured out. That “doing something” means arming themselves, taking personal responsibility for protecting themselves, their families, and therefore their communities, from the very people their stupid and dangerous policies have created.
About Mark Walters
Mark Walters is the host of two nationally syndicated radio broadcasts, Armed American Radio and Armed American Radio’s Daily Defense with Mark Walters. He is the Second Amendment Foundations 2015 Gun Rights Defender of the Year award recipient and co-author of two books, Lessons from Armed America with Kathy Jackson (Whitefeather Press) and Lessons from UnArmed America with Rob Pincus (Whitefeather Press)
And what be the most common denominator within these cities? Just a random coincidence I suppose….NOT! One best not go into or through South Atlanta unarmed. Like it or not, it is factual.
Lance, as I said before, I lived in Michigan for thirty years. I lived on the west side of the state but had to travel to Detroit occasionally for business purposes, in other words, my company sent me there. It was a real relief to be able to get on I-94 and head west out of gangster land. Generous Motors has their headquarters there and built the towns of Flint and others for their workers but due to the high prices of the unions, and you are probably a union supporter, they were forced to disperse their assembly plants and… Read more »
Forty some years ago in Illinois there was a bill [GN710 as I recall] that would ban ALL handguns. The bill did not get out of committee. The result was an immediate 500% increase in armed robberies, for small amounts from gas stations, liquor stores and other small businesses. The police caught many of these people “red handed” and all were from Chicago and St. Louis. Somebody sent these people to Springfield, 100 to 250 miles to steal $5 at gun point. The legislature adjourned and the robberies stopped. I’m not saying that the Illinois Crime Commission was behind the… Read more »
aren’t the sharpest light-bulbs in the knife-drawer.
nowTHIS is rich….
anyone knows that light bulbs DON”T BELONG in the knife drawer.
Just like the dim (shannon) Watts types don’t belong in normal society.
The murder rate in Little Rock is about to pass last years total and we are just barely into August. It’s been quiet for the last couple of days. But we’ve had some sort of shooting almost daily this year. They’ve lost their minds. Some of it is just random shooting. Some are drug deals gone bad or retaliation. It has gotten out of hand. We look like Memphis.
These folks aren’t stupid. They have an agenda to sell, and they know how to sell it. True for all sales promotions: focus on a few examples that promote what you need to sell your product, and ignore anything that runs counter to that sales promotion. Then pump those examples continually for all they are worth. That’s exactly who the anti-gun crowd is doing; they selected examples where violence continues to climb (ignoring the political implications of who’s in charge) and promoted only those. Doesn’t matter what is happening anywhere else in the country; that distracts from the sales pitch… Read more »
Well a particular minority which accounts for 13% of the US population commits 52% of the murders. In Chicago that particular minority is 40% of the population. So, do the math and the reason for Chicago’s high homicide rate becomes apparent.
It’s far less than 13%! Young black men age16-36 comprise around 4% of the population, and it is this group that commits over half of violent crimes.
You have a tough sell, Mark. Many journalists blab on and on. As if they are getting paid by the column inch. And you know before you start reading that it is all lies. Ny Times to LA Times, all a waste of time, effort, and money.
I wonder why these stories never talk about how many of the guns used in the murders were done with stolen firearms or why they don’t tell the readers if the guns were legally bought?
Sanctuary Cities attract gangs from violent countries. MS13 is in the new now, but that is just one gang of many. Illinois now has a quarter million licensed citizens, how many carry every day and how many are in Cook County, I don’t know. But Chicago has been a center of crime since before the days of Al Capone. The Daley klan secured its political power by keeping the people hostage. It could be argued that broader gang violence was mitigated by having the gangs killing each other and not the residents of the “upper class” neighborhoods. But you can’t… Read more »
Yeah, the gunsDO cause the deaths… like the nails in my nail pouch on my carpenter’s took belt cause flat tyres.
Lance, I have to remind you that Detroit had the highest murder rates in the country until the car companies moved out and left a whole bunch of empty houses and the population decreased drastically. The criminals had to move other places in order to keep their trade going because it takes people before you can rob or shoot someone. That was during the democrat days. There use to be bumper stickers that said” the last one out of Michigan, please turn out the lights”. The CB radio traffic nicknamed Detroit the murder city. That was not that many years… Read more »
@tomcat You really don’t have to remind me. I was born in Detroit and have lived within 20 miles of my place of birth for the past 62 years. I, my father, two brothers, three uncle’s (and more) have worked in the Auto industry all our lives. The Auto industry never left Detroit. GM is headquartered in the largest buildings in Downtown Detroit and their engineering complex is in the adjacent city of Warren (for the past 50 years). Ford’s HQ (for 100 years) is in neighboring Dearborn, along with it’s engineering. Many of the Detroit three plants are still… Read more »
Mark, you need to do more research.
Detroit does not fit your profile.
Detroit is in Michigan.
Michigan is a shall issue state.
Michigan has a republican dominated legislator, and a republican Governor.
Detroit’s police chief has gone on record in support of a legally armed citizenry.
Gun banners are not in control here (though any infringement is, too much, for this Libertarian).
Drug gangs and a cultural contempt for the law are the problems here.
Michigan is shall is NOW. But once the gangs get established it takes time for change to take place.
@jh45gun Macklin, I lived in Michigan for thirty years and my first carry permit had to be for hunting or target practice because I was not in law enforcement. You could not buy a gun without the Sheriff’s blessing and registering. It was not a pleasant experience to go through the hoops the sheriff put a person through. The power granted to them made them act like a ruler of some kind. Even with the permit the gun had to transported in the trunk of the vehicle and ammo in a separate place. That was during the times when Detroit… Read more »
Isn’t that what I said? Permit to purchase, another permit to go target shooting [the approved range had to be list, no doubt, a true CCW wasn’t available]
Detroit was a corridor for bootleggers, then drugs, gangs and government destruction of the black family structure all made crime easier and worse.
The laws are getting better, and gangs are fighting back.