Author Topic: Chicago crime rate drops as concealed carry applications surge!  (Read 1083 times)

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Christians4LessGvt

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Chicago crime rate drops as concealed carry applications surge


City sees fewer homicides, robberies, burglaries, car thefts as Illinois residents take arms


By Kelly Riddell
The Washington Times
Sunday, August 24, 2014

An 86-year-old Illinois man with a concealed carry permit fired his weapon at an armed robbery suspect fleeing police last month, stopping the man in his tracks and allowing the police to make an arrest.

Law enforcement authorities described the man as "a model citizen" who "helped others avoid being victims" at an AT&T store outside Chicago where he witnessed the holdup. The man, whose identity was withheld from the press, prevented others from entering the store during the theft.

Since Illinois started granting concealed carry permits this year, the number of robberies that have led to arrests in Chicago has declined 20 percent from last year, according to police department statistics. Reports of burglary and motor vehicle theft are down 20 percent and 26 percent, respectively. In the first quarter, the city's homicide rate was at a 56-year low.

"It isn't any coincidence crime rates started to go down when concealed carry was permitted. Just the idea that the criminals don't know who's armed and who isn't has a deterrence effect", said Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association. "The police department hasn't changed a single tactic, they haven't announced a shift in policy or of course, and yet you have these incredible numbers."

As of July 29 the state had 83,183 applications for concealed carry and had issued 68,549 licenses. By the end of the year, Mr. Pearson estimates, 100,000 Illinois citizens will be packing. When Illinois began processing requests in January, gun training and shooting classes, which are required for the application, were filling up before the rifle association was able to schedule them, Mr. Pearson said.

"The temperature would be 40 below, and you'd have these guys out on the range, having to crack off the ice from their guns to see the target," Mr. Pearson said. "But they'd do it, because they were that passionate about getting their license."

The demand has slowed this summer, but Mr. Pearson expects the state to issue about 300,000 concealed carry permits when all is said and done.

Illinois became the 50th state in the nation to issue concealed weapons permits. An individual permit costs about $600 and requires at least 16 hours of classes.

The Chicago Police Department has credited better police work as a reason for the lower crime rates this year. Police Superintendent Garry F. McCarthy noted the confiscation of more than 1,300 illegal guns in the first three months of the year, better police training and "intelligent policing strategies."

The Chicago Police Department didn't respond to a request for comment from The Washington Times.

However, the impact of concealed carry can't be dismissed. Instead of creating more crimes, which many gun control advocates warn, increased concealed carry rates have coincided with lower rates of crime.

A July study by the Crime Prevention Research Center found that 11.1 million Americans have permits to carry concealed weapons, a 147 percent increase from 4.5 million seven years ago. Meanwhile, homicide and other violent crime rates have dropped by 22 percent.

"There's a lot of academic research that's been done on this, and if you look at the peer-reviewed studies, the bottom line is a large majority find a benefit of concealed carry on crime rates, and, at worst, there's no cost," said John Lott Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center based in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. "You can deter criminals with longer prison sentences and penalties, but arming people with the right to defend themselves with a gun is also a deterrence."

Within Illinois, Cook County, which encompasses Chicago, has the state' largest number of concealed carry applications, with 28,552 requests, according to the county's website. Accounting for population, however, less than 1 percent are carrying.

Mason County has the top per-capita rate in Illinois, with 14 percent of its residents holding concealed carry licenses, followed by Shelby County, with 9 percent.

"When I talk to folks that are supporters of concealed carry here, a lot of them want to get their permits so they can keep a gun in the car just so they have it when they travel to bigger towns and cities," said Shelby County Sheriff Michael Miller.

Shelby County is in southwestern Illinois, about an hour and 45 minutes driving time from St. Louis. Its crime rate is low, and the majority of charges are domestic-related, Sheriff Miller said. He doesn't anticipate concealed carry to change the statistics much.

"These are folks who just want to exercise their Second Amendment rights," Sheriff Miller said. "Luckily, we don't have a gang problem or any serious violent crime. Our types are just rednecks that like to hunt and fish."

Mason County Sheriff Paul Gann said it's too early to tell whether an increased carry rate will have an influence on crime rates.

"What I can tell you is we haven't seen a spike in crime," said Mr. Gann. "We haven't seen a spike in anything that's gun-related, brandishing a firearm, shootings, robberies, nothing. These are law-abiding individuals."

From a national perspective, Florida has the most active concealed carry permits, at nearly 1.3 million. Texas is second, with just over 708,000. Hawaii, at 183, has the fewest of states whose data were available.

At 300,000 concealed carry licenses, Illinois would compare with Virginia, which has 363,274, and Alabama, with 379,917.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/24/chicago-crime-rate-drops-as-concealed-carry-gun-pe/?page=1
"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" - Ronald Reagan - June 12, 1987

Plane

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Re: Chicago crime rate drops as concealed carry applications surge!
« Reply #1 on: August 24, 2014, 11:34:38 PM »
Quote
An individual permit costs about $600 ............

   Does this prevent the poor from getting legal?

Xavier_Onassis

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Re: Chicago crime rate drops as concealed carry applications surge!
« Reply #2 on: August 25, 2014, 11:51:00 AM »
Do the poor have iPhones?
Chicago is not typical of the rest of the US. And, no, it is not because of Obama.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

Christians4LessGvt

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Re: Chicago crime rate drops as concealed carry applications surge!
« Reply #3 on: August 25, 2014, 01:10:07 PM »
"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" - Ronald Reagan - June 12, 1987

sirs

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Re: Chicago crime rate drops as concealed carry applications surge!
« Reply #4 on: August 25, 2014, 01:43:03 PM »
Wow....don't expect this factual news to be reported on any of the MSM outlets
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

Xavier_Onassis

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Re: Chicago crime rate drops as concealed carry applications surge!
« Reply #5 on: August 25, 2014, 02:45:02 PM »
Yeah, they are all part of this huge conspiracy against pistol packers.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

Plane

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Re: Chicago crime rate drops as concealed carry applications surge!
« Reply #6 on: August 25, 2014, 06:07:17 PM »
Yeah, they are all part of this huge conspiracy against pistol packers.

True that.

sirs

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Re: Chicago crime rate drops as concealed carry applications surge!
« Reply #7 on: August 25, 2014, 08:39:00 PM »
Yeah, they are all part of this huge conspiracy against pistol packers.

Ahhh.....the Professor is catching on     8)
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

Plane

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Re: Chicago crime rate drops as concealed carry applications surge!
« Reply #8 on: August 25, 2014, 09:04:20 PM »
Here is why I think the high fee is interesting.
I imagine that due to this fee , most of the(legal) buying is happening where it makes less difference.

Quote
Murder rates in Chicago are incredibly divergent based upon the particular neighborhood in question. Many neighborhoods on the South Side tend to be poorer, less educated, predominantly African American, and infested with street gangs. The neIghborhoods of Austin on the west side and Englewood on the near South Side, for example, have homicide rates that are 10 times higher than other parts of the city. Violence in these neighborhoods has had a detrimental impact on the academic performance of children in schools, as well as a higher financial burden for school districts in need of counselors, social workers, and psychiatrists to help children cope with the violence.[7][8]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Chicago


Oh , this is interesting.

Quote
Recently installed anti-crime cameras are capable of pinpointing gunshot sounds, calculating where the shots were fired, and pointing and zooming the cameras in the direction of the shots within a two-block radius.[40] Since surveillance cameras have been placed in high-crime areas, some Chicagoans feel uneasy about being so closely watched,[citation needed] but others believe their streets are safer.[who?]

Plane

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Re: Chicago crime rate drops as concealed carry applications surge!
« Reply #9 on: August 25, 2014, 09:14:56 PM »
This explains the lumpy rug.



http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-crime-rates/


Quote
Was it just a coincidence, some wondered, that the reclassification occurred less than two weeks before the end of the year, when the city of Chicago’s final homicide numbers for 2013 would be tallied? “They essentially wiped away one of the murders in the city, which is crazy,” says a police insider. “But that’s the kind of shit that’s going on.”

 
For the case of Tiara Groves is not an isolated one. Chicago conducted a 12-month examination of the Chicago Police Department’s crime statistics going back several years, poring through public and internal police records and interviewing crime victims, criminologists, and police sources of various ranks. We identified 10 people, including Groves, who were beaten, burned, suffocated, or shot to death in 2013 and whose cases were reclassified as death investigations, downgraded to more minor crimes, or even closed as noncriminal incidents—all for illogical or, at best, unclear reasons.