{"id":59709,"date":"2016-08-03T06:00:06","date_gmt":"2016-08-03T11:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=59709"},"modified":"2016-08-02T08:36:32","modified_gmt":"2016-08-02T13:36:32","slug":"what-an-incredibly-novel-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=59709","title":{"rendered":"What An Incredibly Novel Idea!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Chicago \u00a0has a horrendous murder rate. \u00a0Black and brown lives apparently don&#8217;t matter down there.<\/p>\n<p>One of the reasons? \u00a0Chicago&#8217;s US attorney publicly announced that he&#8217;s not going to be chasing after &#8220;straw dealers&#8221; &#8211; people who use their clean criminal records to buy guns to resell to criminals. \u00a0And so a lot of gang-bangers&#8217; girlfriends and moms and associates are supplying the guns that feed the bloodbath.<\/p>\n<p>Now, Minnesota has both one of the lower murder rates in the country; outside North Minneapolis, our murder rate in 2014 was competitive with the rural west &#8211;\u00a0<em>and\u00a0<\/em>a high rate of legal gun ownership outside the hapless metro.<\/p>\n<p>Is Minnesota doing something right?<\/p>\n<p>Well, compared to Chicago, almost everyone is. \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/m.startribune.com\/minnesota-federal-tactic-on-gun-violence-getting-attention-in-chicago\/388036562\/?section=%2F\">But yes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Amid signs of a rise in illegal firearms trafficking, federal prosecutors in Minnesota have hit on a novel strategy to crack down on gun violence and get shooters off the streets. Instead of prosecuting suspects for murder, where convictions can be difficult to obtain, they charge multiple defendants with conspiracy to buy and possess guns illegally.<\/p>\n<p>The strategy is rooted in the successful prosecution of 11 gang members in 2014, after what authorities called an \u201call-out shooting gang war\u201d in the Twin Cities. Prosecutors built a conspiracy case that produced 10 guilty pleas and a jury trial conviction of the gang\u2019s leader, Veltrez Black, who was sentenced this spring to 15 years in prison.<\/p>\n<p>Now a Minnesota prosecutor has been asked to share the strategy with Chicago authorities, who are grappling with near nightly volleys of gunfire throughout their city.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Prosecuting criminals to lower crime.<\/p>\n<p>Who&#8217;da thunk it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chicago \u00a0has a horrendous murder rate. \u00a0Black and brown lives apparently don&#8217;t matter down there. One of the reasons? \u00a0Chicago&#8217;s US attorney publicly announced that he&#8217;s not going to be chasing after &#8220;straw dealers&#8221; &#8211; people who use their clean criminal records to buy guns to resell to criminals. \u00a0And so a lot of gang-bangers&#8217; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59709","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=59709"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59802,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59709\/revisions\/59802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}