You should carry a gun everywhere you can do so legally in Illinois. Why? Because the bad guys don’t play nice and they don’t care about the rule of law. They want what they want, when they want it and no silly law or sign is going to modify their behavior or deter them from misbehavior.
Colorado blazed the trail when it comes to legalizing marijuana and implementing “decarceration” policies to keep people out of prison. Between the drug issue and the social justice/woke crime legislation the Colorado legislature has passed, society has changed in Colorado. Frankly, things are getting sporty in the Centennial State.
Looking at what Colorado has done in recent years, it looks like Illinois is doing its best to emulate the Colorado model. Those public policies have taken the state known for its ski slopes and Mile High Stadium to the top of the “violent crime” category from the FBI.
That’s right: Colorado has achieved #1 in the violent crime category according to the US Department of Justice – at least among the 22 most populous states in the nation.
So it doesn’t take a degree in rocket surgery to know that if the Land of Lincoln embraces and implements similar policies, it will reap similar outcomes.
From the Epoch Times, but ZeroHedge does a nice job of applying emphasis, so we’ll go with that.
When he was asked about a March report from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that found that among the 22 most populous states, Colorado was number one for violent crime and what’s led to the increase, Evans was quick to answer.
“In 2012, 2013, 2014, what we really started to see was this push to either reduce penalties or to completely decriminalize a whole bunch of different—and I’ll call them addictive substances because, to me, that’s the important part of this—but I’m talking drugs,” Evans told The Epoch Times.
“It’s the addiction power of drugs that I think kind of laid part of the foundation for where we’re at. There’s a lot of [legislation] we’ve [passed] to reduce penalties on meth, on cocaine, on heroin, on fentanyl. We just legalized, via a popular referendum, psilocybin this last election.
“And the unfortunate side effect of all that is there is still a massive international presence dedicated to the drug trade. You know, you’ve got huge cartels in Mexico that the Mexican government has trouble controlling…”
It’s not like the Mexican drug cartels haven’t set up shop in Mexico, er, I mean Chicago already.
Evans said the push to reduce drug penalties encouraged cartels to “set up shop” in Colorado, as did the push to make it harder to enforce existing laws. “What happens is, inadvertently or not, [these policies] attract a huge criminal presence from the people who make a living distributing and trafficking this stuff,” Evans said.
That, Evans added, led to an increase in other crimes, like vehicle theft and robberies, to fuel drug habits.
Really? You don’t say.
The report states, “Concurrent with Colorado’s rising crime rates, since the start of the pandemic, incarceration in Department of Corrections facilities dropped by 15.5 percent, the number of offenders on parole by 14.1 percent, and the number of offenders on probation by 14.4 percent. A rise in crime should catalyze a corresponding rise in arrests, convictions, and incarceration for the sake of public safety and justice for victims.”
This is where your soft-on-crime criminal justice reform kicks in… fewer arrests, fewer people incarcerated, fewer people on probation, fewer cops more demoralized… Yet there’s more crime.
The story also reports on the demoralizing of police with Colorado’s precursor to the No Cash Bail law Illinois passed… and more.
In short, crime is going to get a lot worse in Illinois. YOU are your own first responder. You can embrace the proven benefits of firearm ownership and concealed carry, or you can pretend that crime will never touch your life.
However, the problem with ignoring crime is that while you can ignore crime, it won’t ignore you. Especially in high-crime cities like Chicago and most other urban population centers.