Illinois Concealed Carry Fails to Reenact "Tombstone"

In January 2014, Illinois finally became the 50th state to issue concealed carry licenses to law abiding people living within its borders.  Predictably, hoplophobes predicted that Chicago's streets would run red with blood, as crazed concealed carry permit holders reenacted the shootout at the O.K. Corral. 

Source: IMDB

Sadly, for bloody-shirt-waving hoplophobes, but fortunately for everyone else, the hoplophobes' fantasies failed to materialize.  Again. 

Opponents of the concealed carry law in Illinois — which State Sen. Bill Cunningham (D-Chicago) said passed with "overwhelming support" — feared that it would increase rather than decrease crime, putting more guns into the streets that could fall into the wrong hands.

They always do.

In the year of concealed carry permits in Illinois, there have only been a couple incidents involving legal gun owners that have created headlines. In July, a concealed-carry permit holder in Crestwood tried shooting at a fleeing armed robber, hurting no one but forcing a police officer to duck for cover. In Chicago a member of the military who had a concealed carry permit shot and wounded an armed man who fired into a crowd on Chicago's Far South Side. 

Nevertheless, Hayes said he stopped opposing the concealed carry law when he realized that the past year has not resulted in the level of violence some anticipated. 

In fact, just the opposite happened.

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.  

Those of us who've been paying attention are not the least bit surprised.  After all, we've seen the same trend throughout the United States since 1993.  But those facts don't matter to hoplophobes.

But Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart's office has not changed its overall stance against the concealed carry law and its implementation, which as the Chicago Tribune reported recently, requires applicants to be vetted by a controversial state licensing board. 

"Sheriff Dart has been very vocal about his opposition," said Ben Breit, Dart's spokesman, adding that "it's a tough spot," because "the courts have spoken" to legalize concealed carry. 

"Gun violence is gun violence, whether it's in the suburbs or the city of Chicago," said Cara Smith, a Dart spokeswoman, acknowledging that the Sheriff's officers help police many of the county's suburbs.

Sheriff Dart and his fellow hoplophobes opposed concealed carry - supposedly - because they believed it would result in more crime.  The facts demonstrate that the opposite happened.  Crime rates dropped with concealed carry, just as they did throughout the US, yet Sheriff Dart and his fellow hoplophobes obstinately continue to oppose concealed carry.  Why?  Because Sheriff Dart and his fellow hoplophobes fear law abiding armed citizens more than they fear criminals.  Thus the term hoplophobe.

The next time a city or state considers relaxing gun laws, hoplophobes will again predict blood in the streets, because no matter how many times their prediction fails, it's the only trick they have.  Don't fall for it.

By the way, Tombstone still rocks, especially Val Kilmer's portrayal of Doc Holliday.

She Demands Much, but Offers Little

And now for something much more lighthearted.

Boy, she sure is demanding!  But, what does she offer in return?  Only a vague promise to "be the perfect wife", who "never learned to cook".

The perfect wife never learned to cook?

Yemen Gets Worse, But It's Still a Model For Success?

Source: BBC

I wrote about the imminent collapse of Yemen just six days ago, and it's already gotten much worse.  The situation is so bad that the president got out while the getting's good, Saudi Arabia has been leading air strikes against Shia rebels, and according to the AP, an invasion is next. 

Once the airstrikes have weakened the rebels and their allies in the military forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a ground invasion of Yemen is planned by Egyptian Saudi and other forces. 

The assault will come from Saudi Arabia and by landings on Yemen's coasts along the Red and Arabian seas, according to three Egyptian military and security officials. 

Three to five Egyptian troop carriers are stationed offshore, they said, although the number of troops was not specified, and the timing of the operation was not given. 

The aim is not to occupy Yemen but to weaken the Houthis and their allies until they enter negotiations for power-sharing, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the plans with the press.  

But fear not!  Yemen is still a model for counter-terrorism success.


You can read a transcript of the exchange from ABC News here.  Here's a bit of it.

QUESTION: You know, that -- that's astounding. You're saying that you still see Yemen as the model? I mean, the central -- building up the central government, a central government which is now collapsed; a president who has apparently fled the country. You know, Saudi troops massing on one border; the Iranians, you know, supporting the rebels. You consider this -- this as a model for counterterrorism? 

EARNEST: Again, John, what the United States considers to be our strategy when confronting the effort to try to mitigate the threat that is posed by extremists, is to prevent them from establishing a safe haven. And certainly in a chaotic, dangerous situation like in Yemen, what the United States will do and has done is worked to try to support the central government, to build up the capacity of local fighters, and use our own technological and military capabilities to apply pressure on the extremists there.

If White House Press Secretary, Josh Earnest's response sounds like nonsense to you, it's probably because you're not high.  If so, a move to Washington State or Colorado may be in order.

The Best Defense Against Two Bad Guys With No Guns...

... is a good guy with a gun.  Even if that good "guy" is an 11-year-old girl. 

An 11-year-old girl used the shotgun she normally keeps to go hunting with her father to scare off a robber in her home, police said. 

The girl was alone at her North Branch Township home on Five Lakes Road about 3:45 p.m. on Jan. 30 when police said she surprised burglars who had broken into the house.
The girl hid in a bathroom closet, where she grabbed her shotgun that police said she stores in a gun safe. 

When one of the burglars opened the closet door, police said the girl -- whose parents were due home from work a short time later -- pointed the shotgun at him and he ran off. 

The accused

"The 12-gauge shotgun is her weapon," said Lapeer County Sheriff Detective Sgt. Jason Parks. "She and her father are into hunting and avid sportsmen. She was familiar with that weapon." 

Parks praised the girl's responsibility, poise and composure. 

"She is fully capable of staying there by herself as we can clearly see based on this situation," he said. "She was able to defend herself from an intruder and be able to resolve an event even most adults would be taken aback by." 

Added Parks, "She is fully capable of making sound, good decisions," he said. "And be a protector of her home."

First, I echo Detective Parks' praise of the young lady.  She behaved prudently and courageously in a possible life-or-death situation.  I'll also praise the girl's father for teaching his daughter to shoot safely.

It's also necessary to point out that the only reason an 11-year-old girl was able to defend herself from two criminals is that she was armed with a gun.  No other tool can give such a small person the power to defend him/herself from multiple assailants who are bigger, heavier and stronger than their intended victim.

Finally, please note that this is yet another scenario that hoplophobes claim doesn't happen.  The criminals ran as soon as they saw the shotgun barrel pointed at them, which is how most defensive gun uses go.   There was no bloodshed precisely because the girl was armed.  And although the girl is a hunter and familiar with her shotgun, there is no reason to believe that she had any tactical training, which disproves the hoplophobes' assertion that one requires Navy SEAL training to effectively use a gun in self defense.  Again.

What would've happened to this young lady if the hoplophobes would've succeeded in disarming her, and/or rendering her ignorant of guns, shooting and hunting?  Fortunately, we'll never need to find out.

College, the Diversity Scam and Outrageous Tuition

College tuition prices have sky rocketed far out of proportion with other prices over the last 40 years.

Source: MJ Perry

As MJ Perry puts it, 

I would have to check to verify this, but I'm not sure there is any other item in the CPI [Consumer Price Index ~ OS] that has gone up faster since the 1970s than "college tuition and fees." We hear a lot about rising medical costs, but those increases (5.8% per year from 1978 to 2011) are relatively minor compared to the increases in tuition (7.45% per year over the same period).  As as you can see from the graph, tuition increases have accelerated over the last decade.  Since 2000, college tuition costs have doubled while medical costs have gone up by "only" about 52%.

A great deal of the price increase is the result of administrative bloat.

Johns Hopkins professor Benjamin Ginsberg reports that although student-faculty ratios fell slightly between 1975 and 2005, from 16-to-1 to 15-to-1, the student-to-administrator ratio fell from 84-to-1 to 68-to-1, and the student-to-professional-staff ratio fell from 50-to-1 to 21-to-1. Ginsberg concludes: "Apparently, when colleges and universities had more money to spend, they chose not to spend it on expanding their instructional resources, i.e. faculty. They chose, instead, to enhance their administrative and staff resources." 

What did that enormous increase in prices buy American students and parents?  For that, we turn to Prager University.



Apparently, college administrators' argument is that American universities are sexist, racist, homophobic hotbeds of rape that everyone should attend, and pay tens of thousands per year for the privilege.  Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

And since we know that college professors and administrators overwhelmingly vote for, and donate to Democrats, and they're the ones who run these sexist, racist, homophobic institutions, that means they are also arguing that "Liberals" and Democrats are racist, sexist homophobes.

That Was Then, This Is Now: Yemen Edition

Via Instapundit:

Six months ago, Yemen was - supposedly - a rare foreign policy success.



Today...

The last US special forces have been withdrawn from Yemen without exciting much notice from the US press.  Max Boot tweets: “All US SOF evacuating Yemen. Huge win for AQAP, huge defeat for US. How many foreign policy disasters can we handle?” Reuters reports, “the United States has evacuated its remaining personnel, including about 100 special operations forces, from Yemen because of the deteriorating security situation there, U.S. officials said on Saturday.”  This means that the last vestiges of what the Obama administration only recently touted as their model counter-insurgency operation are gone.  The collapse has flown largely under the media radar. 

Last week Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post reported that $500 million dollars in American supplied weapons are now in the hands of “Iranian-backed rebels or al-Qaeda”.  The Islamist blitzkrieg is living off huge quantities of captured US materiel.

In other words, the same thing happened in Yemen that happened in Libya and Syria.  Read the rest, if you dare.  It gets worse.

Along these lines, it appears that the world is becoming more violent.

According to an analysis of data from the world’s 20 most lethal wars last year, at least 163,000 people died in conflict. That compares to just under 127,000 in the 20 worst wars the previous year, a rise of 28.7 percent. 

That’s a pretty disturbing spike by anyone’s terms. And if you look at the first few months of 2015, the violence doesn’t seem to be waning. 

What’s even more worrying is that this seems to be part of an ongoing trend that now goes back eight years. According to the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), global violence — as defined by a range of measures from conflict deaths, to displaced persons, to homicide rates — has been rising since 2007.

It's a good thing a Nobel Peace Prize recipieant has been leading the free world since 2009, otherwise, who knows what could've happened?