Think about this for a second: Since the start of 2013, there have been 53 murders in Chicago; in Afghanistan, where Operation Enduring Freedom is entering its 13th year, only three members of the U.S. military have been killed in the same timeframe.
While members of the military fight for your freedoms abroad, the citizens of Chicago – President Barack Obama’s Chicago – are busy engaging in violence that threatens your freedoms here.
Specifically, the Second Amendment. In fact, it isn’t foreign threats or armies that endanger your constitutional right to bear arms, but it is the domestic threat of gun violence, gangs and thugs that represents the Trojan horse leading to the disarming of the law-abiding.
Think about this: 193 citizens of Chicago have been shot in 2013, largely by people in the city harnessing illegally obtained firearms. Worse, Gary McCarthy, the police superintendent of Chicago, has just made himself known as a domestic enemy of the Second Amendment.
McCarthy went on a Chicago Sunday morning talk show and tossed the Second Amendment under the proverbial bus. Reports RedState.com:
“Despite recent court decisions to the contrary, McCarthy opined that the Second Amendment limits citizens to owning smooth-bore muskets. McCarthy went on to say that he believes that the Second Amendment supports mandatory liability insurance for firearm owners and the mandatory application of GPS tracking devices to civilian owned firearms. ”
This is the same police chief who threatened to shoot concealed carry (CCW) holders in Chicago when the unconstitutional ban on CCW is lifted in the city:
“You put more guns on the street expect more shootings,” McCarthy said. “I don’t care if they’re licensed legal firearms. People who are not highly trained … putting guns in their hands is a recipe for disaster. So I’ll train our officers that there is a concealed carry law, but when somebody turns with a firearm in their hand the officer does not have an obligation to wait to get shot to return fire, and we’re going to have tragedies as a result of that. I’m telling you right up front.”
Have you ever heard of an individual carrying a CCW license walking around looking for trouble? Why would the police chief of a city threaten to shoot lawful holders of a state-issued licenses who merely carry a gun to defend themselves from the very people who are responsible for making Chicago a greater war zone than Afghanistan?
Three high school students have been gunned down in Chicago recently: 18-year-old Frances Colon, 18-year-old Janay McFarlane and, most notably, Hadiya Pendleton.
Remember: Only three members of the U.S. military have been killed in Afghanistan during a span covering the first 49 days of 2013. Three high schoolers have been shot dead in Chicago during the last 30.
Pendleton, the 15-year-old honor student who participated in the 2013 Presidential Inauguration event in Washington, D.C., has become the face of the gun-control movement.
President Barack Obama has used the tragic story of the death of Pendleton as a symbol for the push for greater gun-control restrictions, even giving a speech from Hyde Park Academy in Chicago Friday.
Destini Warren, Janay McFarlane’s sister, was on the stage President Obama spoke from at Hyde Park Academy; hours later, she would be just another victim of gun violence in Chicago.
WND has reported that an overwhelming amount of the violence gripping Chicago is situated in black-majority neighborhoods of the city, with black-on-black crime responsible for more than 75 percent of the murders since 2003.
The shooting death of Pendleton was no different, with two black gang members being charged with her slaying.
Michael Ward, 18, and Kenneth Williams, 20, have been charged, with Ward allegedly telling police that Hadiya had “nothing to do with it. She was simply there,” prosecutors said. They also say Williams gave Ward the gun and was the getaway driver.
Pendleton, whose funeral was attended by first lady Michelle Obama.
Chicago, where 4,265 people have been murdered since 2003 – compared to 2,166 American military personnel killed in the Afghanistan conflict since it started on Oct. 7, 2001 – offers a more unforgiving terrain than that found in the battlefields of the Middle East.
The Los Angeles Times reported American troops stationed in Afghanistan have just gone through the longest death-free stretch since 2008:
Over the last 25 days, something unusual has happened in Afghanistan: Not one U.S. service member has been killed. The lion’s share of the fighting – and dying – is now being done by Afghans.
The last American troop death, from injuries suffered in a December roadside bombing, occurred Jan. 20, marking the longest stretch without a fatality since 2008 and offering a glimmer of evidence that the United States’ 11-year war is in its twilight.
Back in 2010, a 30-year-old Thomas Wortham IV, a Chicago police officer who had just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, was killed trying to defend his personal property in the Chatham community in the South Side of the city.
“This is a tragedy. This young man survived two tours in Iraq, and came home and got murdered on the streets in front of the house that he grew up in. In front of his father, it’s just unbelievable,” said Chicago native Alderman Freddrenna Lyle.
Just prior to being murdered in Chicago, Wortham talked about violence in the city with the Chicago Tribune after a number of shootings had closed a basketball court in the Chatham community:
“It’s starting to feel like it’s expected in this community,” Tom Wortham, 30, president of the Cole Park advisory council whose grandfather built a home across from the park 50 years ago, said of the violence. “When people think of the South Side of Chicago, they think violence. In Chatham, that’s not what we see. It’s happened, and we’re going to fix it, so it doesn’t happen again.”
Now ask yourself this: Is it the battlefields of Afghanistan or Chicago that represent the greatest threat to your constitutional liberties, specifically the right to bear arms?
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