Notre Dame Professor Claims Tired Debunked Nonsense About Indiana Being Responsible For Chicago Gun Crime
Many years ago I was in a local gun store because they were a supplier to my business. In front of me was a woman and a male companion. She was there to purchase a handgun. This is in Mishawaka, IN.
Her background check was delayed. The store representative explained to her that the NICS check was delayed and they’d have to wait a few days for the check to go through. She became irate. She was convinced that the store representative was denying her purchase because she was black. He left to get his manager and she turned to me and said something to the effect of ‘can you believe this? Have you ever heard of such a thing?’ I told her I had and it was the law. If your check is delayed they can’t sell you the gun. There are various reasons the background check is delayed but it does happen to law-abiding citizens. She was shocked by what I said. I went on to explain that elections have consequences and there were many (Obama was president) who want to make these waits mandatory for every purchase. She didn’t like the idea of having to wait one bit. The absolute shock she expressed told me she’d never paid much attention to gun laws in this country. That is the case for most members of the media. Jack Colwell is just another example of this ignorance.
Colwell is a visiting journalist with the Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics, and Democracy at the University of Notre Dame. He also writes columns for the South Bend Tribune and Howey Politics.
He recently published an article titled Indiana is not a good neighbor. The basic premise of the article is Indiana is responsible for the gun violence in Chicago. An old, busted, debunked excuse routinely used by Democrat leaders in blue states and cities to excuse their inability to control violence in their own cities. Rest assured, if you have a high gun crime area run by Democrats, they will blame their Republican neighbors so they don’t have to take responsibility.
Let’s take the article one piece at a time.
Indiana is not a good neighbor. It’s a deadly neighbor, exporting guns to gangs in Chicago, where every weekend and on many weekdays, too, a blizzard of bullets threatens and often kills little kids as well as intended gang targets.
Most Hoosiers aren’t complicit, of course, but there is blood on the hands of those, including a lot of state legislators, who proudly point to the state’s lax gun laws that make buying a gun so easy, so fast, sometimes with no questions asked.
The notion that Indiana is a ‘deadly neighbor’ is, to put it plainly, a lie. There is no evidence that shows Indiana having primary culpability in any other state’s violent crime rates. More on that later.
Nice of him to say most Hoosiers aren’t complicit. No kidding. However, he goes on to criticize the legislature for making gun buying in Indiana easy, fast, and sometimes ‘with no questions asked.’ Another bald-faced lie. At no point in any legal gun sale are there ‘no questions asked.’ That simply doesn’t happen and is so utterly ridiculous that anyone who repeats this nonsense loses any and all credibility on this subject.
To buy a gun in Indiana, you have to do the same things you have to do in every other state with some minor details in state law.
- Be 18 or older
- Present state ID (racist?)
- Pass a background check
To pass a NICS background check. There’s a form you fill out. I assure you, it asks questions. Lying on that form is a crime.
Additionally, you are prohibited from buying a gun if you:
- Have been convicted of a felony
- Have been convicted of domestic battery
- Are a drug abuser or under the influence of a drug
- Are an alcohol abuser or are intoxicated
- Are mentally incompetent
As I mentioned earlier, if there’s a delay in your federal NICS check, you don’t get the gun.
They say they want it easy for “law-abiding” citizens to get guns for protection, for hunting, for collecting. Nothing wrong with those purposes, if those were the real purposes of all the purchasers. Too many have no intent to abide by the law. They want to get away with murder.
Thanks for accepting there’s nothing wrong with law-abiding citizens being able to protect themselves with their constitutional rights.
There certainly are those who want to buy guns to commit crimes. Criminals tend to operate that way. Luckily, very few criminals get their guns through legal means. Beyond that, how are FFL dealers supposed to read the minds of these bad guys buying guns? Colwell doesn’t know and neither does anyone else. We’re told profiling is bad. A discrimination suit would likely follow. If you meet the legal requirements to buy and own a gun and don’t do anything alarming during the purchase, they will sell you said gun with few exceptions. Gun dealers do have a right to deny the sale at any time. Then again, they may potentially deal with accusations of discrimination if they do deny a sale. That’s why I opened this column with that story.
As I mentioned earlier, Chicago criminals don’t get their guns from gun stores or gun shows anyway. Sorry folks, the gun show ‘loophole’ is a debunked lie too.
Duke University and the University of Chicago found that Chicago criminals got their guns almost exclusively from friends and family.
“It is rare for offenders to buy from licensed dealers, and also rare for them to steal their guns,” the study says. “Rather, the predominant sources of guns to offenders are family, acquaintances, fellow gang members—which is to say, members of their social network.”
The study found that only 3% of primary guns used in criminal activity were bought from gun stores. A total of 2 guns.
Colwell, and others, are arguing a fallacy about Indiana gun laws making it easy for criminals to buy guns because Chicago’s own criminals admit they don’t buy them from Indiana gun shops. Indiana’s ‘lax’ gun laws still prevent criminals from buying guns. Great news!
Next up is the issue of the straw purchaser.
This is someone the criminal knows and doesn’t have a criminal history or any other issues that would deny them the legal right to buy a gun. The criminal gets the straw purchaser to buy the gun, then the straw purchaser gives the gun, illegally, to the criminal. This is a crime and is against the law in Indiana and everywhere else.
Colwell points out it is alleged a straw purchaser may have obtained the gun used to murder Chicago police Officer Ella French and seriously injure her partner.
Jamel Danzy is a teacher’s aide in Merrillville, IN, and was recently released from jail by a judge who cited his lack of criminal record in the case.
While Professor Colwell convicts Danzy in his article, it is important to note that he’s not been convicted yet. Though it does look like he may be guilty. His brother believes Danzy was intimidated and forced to buy the gun in Hammond, IN, and transfer it to Officer French’s alleged killer.
Again, this is illegal. Indiana law doesn’t allow straw purchasing. So what exactly does Colwell want here? Again, he doesn’t know. There isn’t a system in place in Illinois gun laws that would have prevented a straw purchase either. The FOID card is basically a redundant background check that creates a database of potential gun owners in Illinois. When you go to buy a gun in Illinois, you have to pass the same background checks as in Indiana and straw purchases are common there.
I’d also like to point out that Professor Colwell admits that Danzy told the gun shop he was buying the gun for himself on his forms. See, there were questions asked and he answered them.
Colwell points to Indianapolis, South Bend, Mishawaka, and other cities in Indiana dealing with gun crime. There’s some truth to that. Do you know what Chicago, Indianapolis, and South Bend all have in common? Prosecutors not doing their jobs.
Chicago’s top cop blasted the court system just this last July.
Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown blasted the city’s judges and prosecutors Tuesday, at a press conference discussing the city’s bloody Fourth of July weekend, which saw record-breaking gun violence with more than 100 people shot, and at least 18 people killed.
Like other cities, Chicago is experiencing a spike in gun crime, but unlike other cities, Chicago saw more shootings over the Independence Day weekend than it did during the same holiday weekend last year. Brown, on Tuesday, said that the Chicago Police Department is stretched to the limit and blamed the city’s judicial system for turning violent offenders back out onto the street for the shocking rise in crime.
Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx has been routinely criticized by even Chicago media for releasing felons onto the street. She dropped over 25,000 felony charges in 3 years.
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is dropping felony cases involving charges of murder and other serious offenses at a higher rate than her predecessor.
Her predecessor wasn’t innocent either.
Cook County, IL has had a 13% decrease in guilty pleas/verdicts with a 40% rise in dropped cases between 2013-2019.
What about Indianapolis?
Interesting Statistics About Indianapolis Homicides
A recent review of Indianapolis’ violence issues, specifically involving guns, from March 2018 to February 2020 found around 75% of people had multiple arrests before the homicide. IMPD said on average, both suspects and victims had more than 5 prior arrests.
“The suspects, on average, were arrested at least seven times by the time of the homicide incident,” Allison Davids, Intelligence Analyst at the Crime Gun Intelligence Center, said.
The report by the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform also said at least 39% of homicides involve a group of three or more people committing violence. In these homicides, they are either the victim, suspect or both.
So, Chicago and Indianapolis have a problem with gang violence and the legal system not keeping serious criminals behind bars. Seems like that might be more of an issue with the violence in those cities than gun laws.
South Bend has the same issue. South Bend Prosecutor Ken Cotter has also been known to release violent repeat offenders with gang affiliations. Mishawaka shares a border with South Bend and often has crime imported from South Bend.
While we are on the subject of other areas getting the blame for local crimes … Chicago is responsible for a lot of crime in South Bend/Mishawaka. Chicago gangs and drugs come here. Chicago’s Latin Kings gang is very prevalent in South Bend and even has members in local government politics and public education. If Chicago were a ‘good neighbor’ they’d get a handle on the gang and drug issues in their city so we didn’t have to deal with it here in Michiana. I wonder why Colwell didn’t bring that point up in his article?
Colwell also wrote this:
Chicago Magazine cites statistics showing that 60% of illegal firearms recovered in Chicago came from outside Illinois. Indiana was the leading exporter of the guns.
This is from a gun trace report done in 2017. Anti-gun activists have used it a lot to attack Indiana as the primary reason gang members kill people in Chicago. It is important to know there is competing research showing this data to not be accurate but we’ll take it at face value for this article. Activists and the media always leave out a critical component to that report. By far, the biggest source of guns used in crimes in Chicago … comes from Chicagoland. It’s not even close.
Cook County, IL is home to 7 of the 10 biggest suppliers of guns used in criminal activity in Chicago. Over a third of guns used in crimes come from suburban Cook County while over 40% of the guns were sourced in Illinois. Indiana was second with just 21% of those guns coming from the state. The data suggest that the main reason criminals source guns from Indiana are because Illinois gun shops sell out of supply.
If the issue were really about Indiana’s lax gun laws arming gangs in Chicago, as Professor Colwell says, then why do twice as many of those guns come from gun control utopia Illinois?
Police Abuse Happens To Everyone, Not Just Blacks