Shocker: Focusing on Criminals Yields Public Safety Results

Fairfax, VA – Anti-gun organizations want you to believe that the next law, the next restriction on gun rights, the next burden for law-abiding gun owners will be the game-changer.  Whenever gun control fails – and it always does – the answer is that the effort didn’t go far enough. Researchers grasp for an excuse when they find their preferred gun control laws have no effect on crime.

Chicago experienced fewer homicides and fewer shootings in 2018 than in 2017, marking the second consecutive decrease. The city has long been held up as proof that gun control doesn’t work. Do two years of declining murder rates indicate that gun control has finally worked?

According to an interview conducted by and run in The Trace, of all places, the answer is no. The Traceinterviewed a research director from the Chicago Crime Lab. As the research director acknowledged, crime is “very, very localized, even to certain blocks in certain neighborhoods.” Chicago’s recent strategy was to change the policing and management practices in its police districts. Twenty of the twenty-two police districts are now home to Strategic Decision Support Centers, which put crime analysts and police officers in the same room to address problems close to the source. The reporter ends with a question about policies that Illinois lawmakers should consider to address violence, and the research director suggests they focus on education and giving law enforcement the tools necessary to pursue investigations and protect witnesses.