The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that residents in one of the Windy City’s “wealthiest neighborhoods” have hired private security guards to patrol their section of the Lake View area.
Wealthy elites can afford that sort of thing, but what about average folks living in other parts of that slaughterhouse city, or anywhere else in the country?
One thing that made this a story, apparently, is the fact that among the people involved in this project is Chicago Cubs President Theo Epstein and his wife, Marie Whitney. She is one of the directors of the Southport Community Alliance, the newspaper discovered.
Chicago has racked up quite a body count this year. According to WGN, last month saw 59 murders in the city, and so far this year, there have been 568 slayings. That’s more than the total homicides in some states, and more than twice the number reported for all of last year out in Washington State, where 209 people were murdered, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2015.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
The reason Washington gets mentioned here is because it’s a hotbed of gun control this year, and on Oct. 22, former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords will be in Seattle to join a march in support of a gun control measure, Initiative 1491. It’s aimed at preventing “gun violence.”
Eight days before she shows up, Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton wings into Seattle for a big money fund-raiser at the Paramount Theater on Oct. 14. Tickets for that soirée, according to the Seattle Times, range in price from $250 to $27,000.
Clinton has made gun control a cornerstone of her White House campaign.
So, why don’t Clinton and Giffords take a stroll through Chicago’s South Side? That’s where there appears to be a “gun violence” problem.
While Chicago’s wealthy citizens can afford hired guns, what about all the people who can’t? Out in Washington, according to the state Department of Licensing, last month saw the number of active concealed pistol licenses spike to a new record high of 557,471. That number is up 2,926 over the 554,545 licenses in circulation at the end of August.
That’s how people in not-so-wealthy neighborhoods take care of their safety and the safety of their families.
The ballot measure for which Giffords will march later this month is the brainchild of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, a gun prohibition lobbying group largely funded by wealthy elitists, including Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety. This same group two years ago pushed through Initiative 594 in Washington, a so-called “universal background check” law that has not been enforced and has not prevented any crimes so far as can be determined. It certainly didn’t prevent the Cascade Mall shooting in Burlington late last month.
At the time I-594 was on the ballot, critics reported that over half the funding for the $10.4 million campaign came from about a dozen zip codes in and around Seattle; upscale neighborhoods where the region’s elites hang their coats and hats.
Wealthy people, as the Chicago story suggests, can afford their own security. But, as the Seattle tale underscores, some elitists evidently think their good fortunes give them the right to tell others how to live. At least, that’s how many gun rights activists of modest means see it, and just because they’re not as well off doesn’t make them wrong.
Related:
‘Big News’: Washington state mall gunman apparently voted illegally
If Clinton won the debate, why is she losing in the…
FBI Crime Report: Violent Crime, Homicides Up in 2015
