The Delusion of Ignoring Criminals

Opinion

Is it something in the water?

Officials in Democrat-run strongholds like Chicago are unwilling to accept that their crime problems are the result of their pro-criminal, anti-victim policies, including gun laws that restrict the rights of responsible citizens. Instead, their solution is some variant of “more gun control,” while concurrently diminishing the consequences for the lawbreakers driving up crime rates.

Commenting on the notion that President Donald Trump would next deploy the National Guard to clean up Chicago’s crime, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) released a statement that sought to redirect the focus (and responsibility) away from his administration and violent criminals and make it about housing and hungry children instead:

We know that our communities are safest when we fully invest in housing, community safety, and education. The National Guard will not alleviate the housing crisis. It will not put food in the stomachs of the 1 in 4 children that go to bed hungry every night in Chicago. The National Guard will not fully-fund our public schools or provide mental healthcare or substance abuse treatment to Chicagoans in need. The National Guard is no substitute for dedicated local law enforcement and community violence interrupters who know and serve our communities every day. There are many things the federal government could do to help us reduce crime and violence in Chicago, but sending in the military is not one of them.

Notably, Mayor Johnson polled at an abysmal 6.6% approval rating earlier this year. A substantial majority (67%) of poll respondents pointed to “rampant crime” as the city’s biggest issue, suggesting the mayor’s failure to deal with crime is a driver of his appalling score.

Johnson, “wallowing in the worst job approval ratings of any mayor in the country,” has also challenged the portrayal of Chicago as a city in dire need of some kind of intervention. Contrary to the dystopian lawlessness suggested by the local crime reporting news site CWB Chicago, Johnson maintained that “[w]hat’s being painted by the federal government is false. We love one another. We support one another. We put our arms around one another.”

This is the same Mayor Johnson who recently told his constituents that his administration has “moved past” the country’s “addiction to jails and incarceration,” and that it is “racist, immoral and unholy” to put criminals in prison. What he needed and wanted from the federal government was more resources “to address gun violence in our city.”

The mayor, though, failed to explain how reducing violent crime could be accomplished without the “unholy” and “immoral” expedient of prosecuting and incarcerating the violent perpetrators responsible. Johnson has also been clear that the additional resources he’s asking for don’t include enabling a bigger police presence on Chicago’s streets.

Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show last week, Johnson pointedly refused to give a direct answer to Joe Scarborough’s persistent questions on whether more uniformed police officers would reduce crime, and instead doubled down on poverty and more gun control.

“While Scarborough wanted a yes or no response from the mayor, Johnson evaded the question five times … Johnson went back to his default response, telling Scarborough: ‘I don’t believe that just simply putting out an arbitrary number around police officers is the answer,’” and concluded with “the federal government could work stronger to coordinate with my police department to get guns off the street of Chicago.”

The response is strangely reminiscent of Johnson’s predecessor, former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Lightfoot, another progressive who swept into office in 2019 on a landslide vote, was ousted in an election where public safety – specifically, runaway crime – was the dominant issue. Throughout her tenure, Lightfoot conflated the city’s crime problem with a gun problem, and spoke of firearms as if they were divorced from the criminals who used them. Because Illinois already has some of the most restrictive gun control laws in America, Lightfoot’s preferred talking point (here, here and here) was the need for more “sweeping and aggressive gun control” at the federal level. Blaming the federal government for Chicago’s violent crime conveniently absolved her city government from accountability.

Another official, former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, has gone beyond the rejection of incarceration with her own wacky ideas on “non-punitive justice.”

Foxx, who as Chicago’s chief prosecutor embraced “de-prosecution” strategies like dropping felony cases and declining to prosecute misdemeanors, aired her latest musings on the criminal justice system. As reported by CWB Chicago, her progressive vision includes “reimaging[ing] institutions, where we build systems of accountability that are not punitive,” moving “from justice to impact,” and normalizing the acceptance of crime as a collective benefit for society at large. “What if we became willing – strategically and morally – to absorb some harm in service of a greater good?” Arguably, the only thing even more bizarre was Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s August 22 pronouncement on X listing three “Things People are Begging for,” with no. 3 being the “release of the Epstein files” and no mention of less crime or safer streets.

All of this is on-brand for anti-gun Democrats. Ostensibly decrying crime while advocating the defunding of police, non-incarceration and other “non-punitive” justice, and a hellish vision of the “greater good” is all of a piece with demanding more federal resources and rejecting those resources (law enforcement support through federal policing) as “uncalled for, and unsound,” to quote Mayor Johnson. Another Illinois Democrat reformer of the criminal legal system and Giffords-endorsed gun-grabber, Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, had the gall to describe the potential federal crime-fighting deployment as a showdown over fundamental freedoms, assuring citizens that she would “stand for your rights, your freedoms, and will protect you against whatever storms of hate and fear come our way.”

This kind of empty, performative political maneuvering is likely the reason why the approval rating of the Democrat Party has tanked to a historic low: 63 percent of voters now hold an unfavorable view of the party, seeing it as disconnected from and uninterested in the needs of ordinary citizens and working people. Instead of recognizing these viewpoints are a political liability that has cost the party voters and seats, leftist politicians remain committed to the delusion that undermining the criminal justice system and championing gun control is the route to political success.

About NRA-ILA:

Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the “lobbying” arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess, and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Visit: www.nra.org

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