Within Cook County, the top five concealed carry ZIP codes per capita are all predominately white, middle class and are in areas that have low crime rates. However, the most violent neighborhoods within the county \u2014 all of which are on the South Side of Chicago \u2014 are predominately black, where residents earn less than $48,000 annually and hold the fewest concealed carry licenses as a percentage of the population.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
“But maybe it’s because fewer poor black people apply <\/em>for permits”, a lefty might say.<\/p>\nAnd she’d be right – but not for the reasons they assume (with emphasis added):<\/p>\n
Illinois residents say the disproportionate statistics all boil down to cost. Of right-to-carry states, Illinois has the highest registration and training fee, costing an applicant about $650 on average for fingerprinting, taxes and logistics \u2014 excluding the price of the gun<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\u201cIn these gangbang neighborhoods, people can\u2019t afford the license. They\u2019re making choices between food and medicine, and they can\u2019t even guarantee they\u2019ll get even that,\u201d said Shawn Gowder, 49, who lives in Chicago\u2019s Auburn Gresham neighborhood on the South Side, where two homicides have taken place in the last 30 days. \u201cWe need to arm ourselves and protect ourselves from these gangbangers, but we just can\u2019t afford to do it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Tack on sixteen hours of training – the longest requirement in the US.\u00a0 Go ahead – fit that in around work and family.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Of course, “safety” legislation over the past 45 years have done a lot to price firearms, especially handguns, out of reach of poor people. Even a Soviet-surplus Makarov – just about the cheapest useful handgun on the market – will be close to $300, especially in a high-tax area like Chicago.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If the same data trends occurred in banking and insurance, there might be outcries of \u201credlining,\u201d denying a group of people access to goods or services because of the color of their skin or income levels. But there\u2019s little public concern expressed so far about the possibility that poor blacks are being disenfranchised from the right to carry a concealed weapon.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou really need to ask whether or not politicians are consciously trying to disarm certain groups of people,\u201d said Dr. John Lott, a Second Amendment expert and president of the Crime Prevention Center. \u201cWhy do they want a law that primarily disarms blacks and gives guns to only well-to-do whites? Don\u2019t they think it should be equal for everyone to protect their lives?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Lott knows as well as you, me, and the poor people of Chicago that that’s a rhetorical question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The goals of gun control, from the very beginning before the American Revolution, are rooted in racism.\u00a0 Every single gun control measure in this nation’s history has been passed against a backdrop of “making sure black people don’t kill white people” – from laws disarming slaves before independence, to the post-Civil-War era laws in Texas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ebony-and-ivory","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47560"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47604,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47560\/revisions\/47604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}