Why does Chicago have the least federal gun-crime prosecutions?

"The districts of Eastern New York, Central California, and Northern Illinois ranked 88th, 89th and 90th, respectively, out of 90 districts, in prosecutions of federal weapons crimes per capita last year..." — but why? Wayne LaPierre has pointed to this study, as if it shows why we don't need more gun laws and we simply need to get serious about the gun laws we already have. Chicago epitomizes a city with a gun violence problem, so why is it "dead last"? — to quote LaPierre.

From the first link, which goes to a U.S. News article:

[T]he U.S. attorney's office in the Northern District of Illinois maintains that federal weapons law enforcement is among the top priorities of their office. "We have a number of different methods of attacking gangs, guns, drugs and violent crime," says spokesman Randall Sanborn, who notes that many gun arrests are reviewed to determine whether the arrest should stay with the county or be brought to the federal level. "We look at which court the defendant is likely to get a substantially greater sentence... More cases that used to be brought federally are now staying in state courts because [they are] now able to get a sentence equally great or greater," he says....

While the districts that ranked lowest last year for federal gun crime prosecutions all contained major cities, the districts at the top of the list for its enforcement were almost exclusively rural. The districts of Southern Alaska, Kansas and Western Tennessee ranked first, second and third in prosecutions of federal weapons laws per capita last year.

Susan Long, a statistician and co-director of [Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks federal data], said the data revealed a stronger federal enforcement presence in rural areas than urban ones. "If taxpayers of [a certain area] don't pass strong gun control measures ... the feds pick up the ball," she said.

So Chicago ranks last in federal prosecutions because there's more state law regulating guns and there's more enthusiasm among state prosecutors about enforcing it. Street-level violence is more properly handled in state court. Unless you've got interstate webs of criminal activity, gun crimes shouldn't be cluttering up the relatively scarce federal district courts (which have to handle civil and criminal cases). What seems to be happening in Chicago is a preferable allocation of federal and state power.

The reason other areas have a higher proportion of federal gun-crime prosecutions seems to be that there's much less state-level enthusiasm about gun crimes and the feds are stepping in to fill the gap. Depending on what crimes are prosecuted, you might want to criticize the feds for oppressing the people in the states that — following their vision of government — have a more easygoing attitude about what people do with guns (perhaps because people around them aren't doing such bad things, as they are in Chicago). But you've got to perceive the way these sparsely populated places are getting proportionately more prosecutions and thereby driving places like Chicago lower on the TRAC list of federal prosecutions rankings.

"Do you know where Chicago ranks in terms of enforcement of the federal gun laws?"

"Out of 90 jurisdictions in the country, they ranked 90th. Why doesn't NBC News start with, 'Shocking news on Chicago. Of all the jurisdictions in the country, Chicago's dead last on enforcement of the federal gun laws'? Why doesn't the national press corps, when they're sitting down there with Jay Carney and the president and the vice president, why don't they say, 'Why is Chicago dead last in enforcement of the gun laws against gangs with guns, felons with guns, drug dealers with guns'?"

Why push for bad new laws when good old ones are not enforced? — asked Wayne LaPierre (on "Meet the Press" today).

"The Nine Most Insane Quotes From The NRA’s New Apocalyptic Op-Ed."

Wayne LaPierre opinion piece is translated into He's Crazy! format for safe consumption by the readers of Think Progress, so they can keeping thinking: Progress!

ADDED: I hope Think Progress isn't also flogging the lefty meme that we must not, in our struggle against gun violence, stigmatize the mentally ill. There's a meme-collision here: 1. Don't fear the mentally ill, who are harmless and deserving of empathy, and 2. That man seems like a mentally ill person, so we need to loathe and fear him.

Who's missing the point here where Sen. Durbin shouts "you missed that point" at the NRA's Wayne LaPierre?

Here's the video, featured at Talking Points Memo, under the heading, "Durbin Hits Back At NRA’s LaPierre: 'You Missed That Point Completely.'" TPM uses the words "sharply admonished" to characterize the drama in Durbin's voice and notes the "applause from some in the audience."



Full text at the link, but you have to watch the video to understand the incivility of Durbin's tone. Durbin does have a point that LaPierre missed, but why didn't he address LaPierre with respect and invite him to reflect upon the missed point or to refute it he can?

I asked that question out loud, and Meade said, "You're missing the point." 

Of course, Durbin's real point was not that background checks deter criminals from buying guns. The point was to find an opportunity for drama and to seize it. These so-called hearings have little to do with gathering information for the purpose of writing sound legislation. It's political theater to build support for... oh, what difference does it make what they really do as long as they do something?

I ask Meade if I can use his quote in this post, and he says yes, adding that I should let people know that he spoke in a completely civil tone.

Remember the great call for civility that went out — from President Obama and many others — after the Tucson shootings? I've always used the tag "civility bullshit" for that topic, because I never believed that it was intended to apply across the board. Imagine the reaction in the media if LaPierre had used the tone employed by Durbin.

Crazy NRA approach to school violence...

... is supported by 55% of Americans.

By "crazy," I mean that the elite media went all out to portray the suggestion as insane:

Here's the NYT editorial, which is entitled "The N.R.A. Crawls From Its Hidey Hole."

[W]e were stunned by Mr. LaPierre’s mendacious, delusional, almost deranged rant.

Mr. LaPierre looked wild-eyed at times....

We cannot imagine trying to turn the principals and teachers who care for our children every day into an armed mob....

I wonder what the support for LaPierre's proposal would be if he'd been given a respectful hearing in the press?

I finally figured out what David Gregory displaying that prop reminds me of.

Yesterday, I was asking: Why was that prop so important to David Gregory? If possession of that high-capacity magazine was a crime, and the NBC folk knew it and had even contacted the police and thus even knew they'd created rock-hard evidence that they knew it, why did they go ahead and have Gregory flaunt that illegal possession on television? They had to have thought it was a devastatingly powerful prop. My first guess was that they imagined that viewers — some viewers, at least — would find the object itself scary.

Now, I've got to show you another one of Chip Ahoy's little riffs, because it's what jogged my thinking on the subject for some reason. Here's Chip in the comments thread to that other post, the one where I showed those David Gregory masks (designed by Chip). This is a little dialogue:

"No. It doesn't look that threatening to me. If that's what you were thinking. No. It just doesn't."

"What do you mean? Are you insane? This magazine holds thirty rounds."

"So."

"So? So? So? Is that all you got? It holds thirty!"

"So. It's small. Looks like a PEZ dispenser to me."

"WHAT? So, this is amusing to you? You find this amusing."

Caption: "It holds 30." I'm not sure exactly why that jogged my thinking, but suddenly I understand the drama Gregory (and his people) were trying to enact. It's a deep psychic memory of childhood. Gregory sought dominance over his interlocutor, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, and the idea — in the act of picking up that magazine and beginning an interrogation about it — was that Gregory would become (subliminally) a parent figure who would push LaPierre into the subordinate role of the little boy, the cowering child confronted with undeniable evidence of his wrongdoing. What's THIS I found in your room?

The plan was for LaPierre to babble lamely, scrambling to explain it away, like the kid trying to concoct some cockamamie reason why that (whatever) got into his room. He'd look foolish and guilty, as Dad continues to hold up the item which the kid knows will be the defeat of every idea that flashes through his stupid, stupid brain.

The scenario didn't play out as scripted. LaPierre is a stolid veteran of many a confrontational interview. He's not going to let the interviewer get the upper hand that easily. Somebody needs to tell Gregory: We all want the hand. Hand is tough to get.

"Certainly, if LaPierre had shown up with that magazine, there would be howls of gotcha, and widespread media demands for prosecution.

"Why should NBC News and its star be above the law?"

David Gregory, neatly tweaked...

... by Drudge (in Christmas colors):



The links are: "Did David Gregory Violate DC Gun Law On National TV?" and "Mocks NRA Chief for Proposing Armed Guards; Sends Kids to High-Security School..."

And here's the transcript for the whole interview. We watched it. Gregory was all heated up, eager to extract his sound bites from LaPierre, in the typical style of recent gun control debates I've seen, like this one between Bob Wright and Jacob Sullum. The one who wants gun control cranks up the emotion, and the gun control opponent stolidly stands his ground.

It's like they intended to make an implicit argument, premised on the question: This is what a human being is like; do you want people to have guns? The gun control advocate models the answer "no" (because people run on emotion and might do unpredictable, regrettable things). The gun control opponent models the answer "yes" (because people are stable and rational).

It's all about control: Do you think people are self-controlled or is government control needed? And now, I see this post is about to bust loose into a much more general set of observations about politics, and I don't want to do that. This is a blog post, the first of the day, and it needs to come to an end. So let me leave you with 3 brief bonus observations:

1. David Gregory was not appearing on "Meet the Press" as a gun control advocate. He's the moderator... some sort of "journalist."

2. If a new federal gun control program includes a buy-back of some newly banned "assault" weapons, it will be like Cash for Clunkers. I hated Cash for Clunkers.

3. The post-Newtown gun control advocates have been emphasizing the gun, rather than the person, on the theory that a person may have murderous impulses but if he doesn't have a gun, he won't be able to do as much damage. But in real life, if you had someone in you midst who was bent on murder, you would not think: Well, at least he doesn't have a gun. If he goes off, what's the worst he can do, maybe 4 or 5 kids, max?

Scenery chewing in the Theater of Outrage over Wayne LaPierre's unremarkable news conference.

Read the transcript of what LaPierre said, if you haven't already, so you know what the purveyors of outrage are characterizing for their readers.

Here's the NYT editorial, which is entitled "The N.R.A. Crawls From Its Hidey Hole."

[W]e were stunned by Mr. LaPierre’s mendacious, delusional, almost deranged rant.

Mr. LaPierre looked wild-eyed at times....

We cannot imagine trying to turn the principals and teachers who care for our children every day into an armed mob....

He proposed a mob? This is a failure (or pretended failure) of imagination. What if those who worked in schools were offered training in weapons and permission to carry in schools if they could qualify — entirely optional? Is that idea obviously mendacious, delusional, and almost deranged? The NYT is hot to exclude it as something any sane person would even begin to contemplate. They'd like an instant crazy image of teachers gone wild.

People like Mr. LaPierre want us to believe that civilians can be trained to use lethal force with cold precision in moments of fear and crisis. That requires a willful ignorance about the facts. 

If "civilians" can't be trained, how can noncivilians be trained? And quite aside from how well people hit targets, isn't the presence of an armed guard a deterrent from beginning an attack, and doesn't pointing a gun at the criminal sometimes end his attack?

Moving on from the NYT, here's Andrew Sullivan absorbing LaPierre into an all-out assault on the GOP titled "Enough!":

Between the humiliating and chaotic collapse of Speaker Boehner's already ludicrously extreme Plan B and Wayne La Pierre's deranged proposal to put government agents in schools with guns, the Republican slide into total epistemic closure and political marginalization has now become a free-fall. This party, not to mince words, is unfit for government.

If that kind of hysteria — sounding deranged in the condemnation of derangement — is what counts as unminced words these days, I'd like to put in an order for minced words. I'd like to aim a precise scoff at the phrase "government agents in schools." Agents! Sounds very scary, but the truth is, teachers are government agents.

Anyway, Sullivan's style of hysterical talk wins The Game of Internet, where the score is kept in traffic statistics. And Sullivan himself is boasting that his "Enough!" post "has just blown up on Facebook." Kablooey! He's so sensitive about those terrible guns, but his metaphor of choice is explosion.

"Listen I don’t necessarily think having an armed guard outside every classroom is conducive to a positive learning environment."

Said Gov. Chris Christie when he was asked to respond to the NRA's proposal about school safety.

Not that NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre said there should be an armed guard outside every classroom. That's an interpretation imposed by Christie for the purpose of rejecting the proposal. Christie conceded that he didn't "know the totality of the proposal," but he seemed to think that "from a law enforcement perspective," you’d have to have an armed guard outside every classroom since schools have so many doors. But isn't that like saying there's no point having police officers on the street unless there can be one on every corner? Wouldn't an armed guard somewhere in the school be able to rush to the scene of a disturbance anywhere in the school within a few seconds? That would be better than waiting for the police, wouldn't it? And consider the deterrent value. A school with an armed guard wouldn't seem like such an obvious soft target, and that might make all the difference to the sort of coward who would murder children.

Christie says: "You don’t want to make this an armed camp for kids. I don’t think that’s a positive example for children. We should be able to figure out some other ways to enhance safety it seems to me. I think that’s the easy way out."

Okay, what are the other ways? It's good to be open to other ways, but, ironically, Christie only perceives one way to implement the NRA proposal. He sees the school looking like an "armed camp" with a guard displaying a gun at every door. That's the easy way to dismiss the NRA proposal. Why not consider positive ways to bring armed security into the school — at least before rejecting the idea? Claiming you're resisting the "easy way" when you refuse to do that is pure sophistry.

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

Says Wayne LaPierre, delivering the NRA's answer to the Newtown massacre:

The NRA is gonna bring all its knowledge, all its dedication and all its resources to develop a model national schools shield emergency response program for every single school in America that wants it. From armed security to building design and access control, to information technology, to student and teacher training, this multifaceted program will be developed by the very best experts in the field...

If we truly cherish our kids, more than our money, more than our celebrities, more than our sports stadiums, we must give them the greatest level of protection possible. And that security is only available with properly trained, armed good guys.