Tag Archives: Crime

News

Is Obama against police officers and victims of crime?

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Obama has really put his foot in his mouth this time by insulting police officers just for performing their duties.

Normally, I would always blog about policy issues and leave these Obama gaffes for other blogs. But in watching the story explained on Fox News below, I began to realize that there was a policy angle after all.

Watch this Fox News clip: (H/T Nice Deb)

And pay attention to the part of the transcript that Deb snipped out from NRO, where Charles Krauthammer makes the point:

I think it was important, because the Democrats have suffered for almost a half a century of a reputation of being soft on crime. The flip side of that is tough on cops, or insensitive to the duties and the sacrifices of law enforcement.

Now click through and see Verum Serum’s video of non-white police officers standing by officer Crowley. (H/T Hot Air)

The police are not happy with Obama calling them stupid. But should we be surprised that he thinks police are stupid?

Consider this article on Obama’s softness on crime from The Hill.

Excerpt:

In 1998, Obama was one of only three senators to vote against a proposal making it a criminal offense for convicts on probation or on bail to have contact with a street gang.

In 2001, Obama voted against a measure that would have expanded the penalties for some gang activity to include the death penalty. The bill was vetoed by then-Gov. George Ryan (R ) not long after he had issued a moratorium on the death penalty in the state.

Obama, at the time, said the bill would unfairly target minorities, stating, “There’s a strong overlap between gang affiliation and young men of color … I think it’s problematic for them to be singled out as more likely to receive the death penalty for carrying out certain acts than are others who do the same thing.”

Obama opposes the death penalty except for terrorists, serial killers and child-murderers, but his campaign added that he does not support the death penalty as it is currently administered in this country.

On a 1999 vote making adult prosecution mandatory for aggravated discharge of a firearm in or near a school, the senator voted “present.”

He explained the vote, saying, “There is really no proof or indication that automatic transfers and increased penalties and adult penalties for juvenile offenses have, in fact, proven to be more effective in reducing juvenile crime or cutting back on recidivism.”

And in 2001, Obama voted “present” on a bill that would increase penalties for trafficking in Ecstasy and other designer drugs.

The senator questioned the length of some drug penalties when compared to other crimes, noting that selling 15 tablets of Ecstasy was a Class X felony, as was raping a woman at knifepoint.

…During Obama’s campaign against Rush, the senator missed a vote on the Safe Neighborhoods Act that would have made illegal gun possession a felony, and Ryan blamed Obama and two other lawmakers for missing the vote and dooming the legislation, though it failed 31-17.

And consider this IBD article:

Excerpt:

As an Illinois state senator, for example, he acted more as a friend to criminals than to cops, legislating among other things:

• Curbs on what he called a “broken” death penalty system.

• A measure to expunge some criminal records and give job grants to ex-cons.

• Tougher handgun controls.

• A vote against making gang members eligible for the death penalty if they kill someone to help their gang.

• Opposition to a bill requiring juveniles to be prosecuted as adults for firing a gun at or near a school.

At the federal level, Obama would:

• Repeal “unfair” mandatory sentences for crack convictions.

• Provide drug counseling instead of jail time for some abusers.

• Rethink criminal penalties for pot.

• Ban profiling by federal law enforcement, even if it helps catch violent criminals including terrorists.

• Strengthen hate-crime laws and beef up civil rights enforcement against police chiefs who profile.

• Provide job training, drug rehab and counseling for ex-cons.

• “Re-enfranchise” felons denied the right to vote.

In addition, Obama, who once vowed to repeal the Patriot Act, still talks about reforming it. He also once proposed banning executions of inmates, arguing he was against capital punishment.

…”In our criminal justice system, African-Americans and whites are arrested at very different rates,” Obama recently complained. “It has to do with how we pursue racial justice.”

This Cambridge, MA story is consistent with Obama’s previous voting record against public safety and law enforcement.

News

Understanding how concealed carry laws save lives

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The Richmond Times-Dispatch has this story. (H/T John Lott)

Excerpt:

A gunman who had wounded a shopkeeper and opened fire on several customers was stopped yesterday when another man shot him at the store in South Richmond, authorities said.

…The man who shot the robber is a friend of the store owner, and he was wearing a holster with a Western-style revolver, said Managing Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Tracy Thorne-Begland.

After the suspect shot the store owner and opened fire on patrons, the owner’s friend shot the suspect once in the torso, took his gun and called police, Thorne-Begland said.

How many times are legally-owned firearms used to prevent crimes, as occurred in this story?

Consider this interview with Florida State University criminology professor Gary Kleck.

Excerpt:

“In 2006, about 11,600 homicides were committed by criminals armed with guns, claiming 68 percent of all homicides,” he says. Based on data from the National Criminal Victimization Survey (NCVS), as many as 500,000 violent crimes were committed in the United States in 2006 by offenders armed with guns, and around 26 percent of robberies and 7 percent of assaults were committed by gun-armed offenders.

These facts have led many people to conclude that America’s high rate of gun ownership must be at least partially responsible for the nation’s high rates of violence, or at least its high homicide rate, says Kleck, adding that this belief in a causal effect of gun levels on violent crime rates has, in turn, led many to conclude that limiting the availability of guns would substantially reduce violent crime, especially the murder rate.

“What’s not so widely known, though, is that large numbers of crime victims in America also use guns in the course of crimes (but) in self-defense,” says Kleck.

Based on 16 national surveys of samples of the U.S. population, he continues, the evidence indicates that guns are used by victims in self-protection more often than crimes are committed by offenders using guns. Victims used guns defensively two to two-and-a-half million times in 1993, for example, compared to about 850,000 crimes in which offenders possessed guns.

Maybe guns are not as scary as we had been led to believe!

Commentary

Does legalized abortion reduce crime rates?

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One of the reasons given by pro-choice people for legalized abortion is that it reduces crime rates. But does it really reduce crime rates?

Let’s take a look at a two-part series by economist John Lott, writing for Fox News.

Here is the first article.

Excerpt:

Academic studies have found that legalized abortion, by encouraging premarital sex, increased the number of unplanned births, even outweighing the reduction in unplanned births due to abortion.

In the United States from the early 1970s, when abortion was liberalized, through the late 1980s, there was a tremendous increase in the rate of out-of-wedlock births, rising from an average of 5 percent of all births from 1965 to 1969 to more than 16 percent two decades later (1985 to 1989).

Here is the second article.

Excerpt:

What happened to all these children raised by single women? No matter how much they want their children, single parents tend to devote less attention to them than married couples do. Single parents are less likely than married parents to read to their children or take them on excursions, and more likely to feel angry at their children or to feel that they are burdensome. Children raised out of wedlock have more social and developmental problems than children of married couples by almost any measure — from grades to school expulsion to disease. Unsurprisingly, children from unmarried families are also more likely to become criminals.

This material is exposited more fully in Lott’s book “Freedomnomics“, which is one of my favorite books. I bought it for 3 of my friends as part of their Christmas present bundle, including Andrew and Jen, the smartest married couple in the world!

About the author

John R. Lott, Jr. is a Senior Research Scholar at the University of Maryland. Lott has held positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice and was the chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission during 1988 and 1989. Lott has published over 100 articles in academic journals. He is the author of six books including: “More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws”, “The Bias Against Guns”, and most recently “Freedomnomics.” Opinion pieces by Lott have appeared in such places as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and The Chicago Tribune. He has appeared on such television programs as the ABC and NBC National Evening News broadcasts, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and the Today Show. He received his Ph.D. in economics from UCLA in 1984.