The anti-gunners didn’t have a good day in Springfield yesterday.
They paraded out a half-dozen or so “witnesses” to carefully craft a house of cards to support their position that municipalities should be allowed to create a patchwork of laws against certain classes of guns. They cherry picked quotes from court cases and questionable statistics. They tugged on the heartstrings. There was righteous indignation from the t-shirt wearing (or so it seems) member of Moms Demand Action. (Someone should tell her they have dresses at Goodwill.)
Among the anti-gunners present was a woman wearing what looked like a t-shirt speaking on quasi-behalf of Moms Demand Action. Clearly, she dressed up.
And then there’s Lee Goodman. You remember him:
Lee Goodman claims that pro-gun people counter-demonstrating against his “Merchants of Death” series of rallies are racist, bigots and homophobes.
Here’s his motley crew in action from his “Peaceful Communities” Facebook page.
At these events, he claims to have heard from the pro-gun counter-demonstrators:
- One pro-gun person supposedly told him, “It’s the blacks.”
- Another said everyone’s a gang banger in Chicago.
- One of the gun people allegedly said: “Maybe it would be better if they all shot one another. That’s what we call that culling the herd.”
- The same man allegedly said “they are animals”.
Goodman, the man with many cats and a really big heart, lamented that not one of the counter-demonstrators had any concern about the lives of the people who are threatened by guns.
Yes, because Lee Goodman is such a magnanimous individual that he lives in those neighborhoods in a noble effort to make lives better for the residents there with his mantra of “Renounce Violence, Reject Guns”. Not so much.
They carefully crafted that house of cards and then the NRA contract lobbyist for Illinois completely destroyed it (or set it ablaze, depending on your take) in a matter of minutes.
It came down to the Senate Sub-committee chairman, Senator Don Harmon nearly resorting to crocodile tears about the loss of life in Chicago.
Instead of following proven solutions to criminal violence, Senator Harmon and Senator Julie Morrison want to strip law-abiding Illinoisans of their right to own guns effective for self-defense.
If Senator Harmon wants to know what gets proven results, he needs to look no further than the State of Florida.
Florida has the lowest level of firearm violent crime in that state’s history.
How? Florida’s got a powerful 10-20-Life law that doesn’t get plea-bargained away. Commit a violent crime with a gun in Florida, you get an extra ten years in prison on top of the sentence for the underlying crime. There’s no parole, probation or plea-bargains.
Discharge a gun in Florida in the commission of a violent crime? Add 20 (!) years to the sentence for the crime. In other words, popping off five rounds at people on a busy street in Florida means you’ll be gone for at least twenty years plus time for the crime. In Chicago, prosecutors charged that same crime is charged as a misdemeanor. There’s even a video on YouTube of the woman (who was a felon, intoxicated, illegally carrying the gun) firing the shots!
In Florida, you shoot a gun and wound or kill someone, you spend 25 years to Life in prison on top of the sentence for the underlying crime. No probation. No parole. No good time. Just hard time.
In Chicago, when three gang-bangers drive by a busy park and shoot the people there with three guns, wounding two and are caught red-handed moments later after a short chase, the Cook County State’s Attorney charges them with a Class 4 felony: One to three years in prison upon conviction.
No, Senator Harmon made not a single mention about soft-on-crime Democrat prosecutors failing to prosecute violent crimes. No mention on the short sentences meted out to those who are by some miracle convicted of violent crimes. Or how Illinois prison time is like dog-years in reverse.
Instead, he’s summoning insincere crocodile tears about the poor children getting killed in his neighborhood.
Those poor children… like the 14- and 15-year-old gang bangers with dozens of arrests for all manner of violent crime who themselves end up dead. Cry us a river Senator.
Here’s the video from the hearing. You can skip forward to Todd Vandermyde and crew just destroying the house of cards crafted so carefully by gun grabbers over the previous half-hour or more at the 30 minute mark.
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