Get MORE Guns on Chicago Streets

Maj Touré is a name most Chicagoans do not know.

It is understandable ignorance to a degree, given that he is from Philadelphia.

But, Maj Touré ought to be a name familiar to Chicagoans, and New Yorkers; Detroiters and whatever we might call people from Memphis, Cleveland, Miami and any other city in America.

The reason: several years ago, Touré translated his knowledge of history, sociology and law enforcement into forming ‘Black Guns Matter’. With violent crime escalating all around him, Touré moved from talk to action.

The answer to quelling the rampant violent crime raging throughout Philadelphia, Chicago and elsewhere is not fewer guns in the hands of city residents, but many, many more. Touré and his organization educate, train, and facilitate licensing for those in the City of Brotherly Love who wish to truly protect themselves and their families.

This is not simply because John Lott Jr. has been proven correct, time after time; year after year. For while the author of More Guns, Less Crime (out in its third edition from the University of Chicago Press, 2010) has had his theories and suppositions validated by every urban and federal crime statistic, gun control measures routinely advanced by progressives reveal more than just their abject futility. Keeping guns off of the streets, out of the hands of Chicagoans actively contributes to the ever increasing lawlessness and violence raging throughout the city.

The truth is, while this libertarian would prefer universal privatization of police and security forces, the Chicago Police Department is not going away anytime soon. Indeed, I feel an albeit reluctant but nonetheless considerable amount of sympathy for the average cop, the clean cop that is, who joined the CPD out of community college or undergrad; who might be from a family of other cops; who might just have been fooled into thinking that apparatchiks from the City Council and Mayor’s and State’s Attorney’s Offices might back them up when riots rage and crimes are committed. Sorry. Not in Lori Lightfoot and Kim Foxx’s Chicago.

Still, from the city’s own Office of Public Safety Administration website (best to give bureaucratic agencies as many redundant titles as possible–makes it sound like they are actually accomplishing something), the average police response time is just a few ticks below 10  minutes. I’ll repeat that: 10 minutes. That is a veritable lifetime for a criminal and his victim(s). In two districts, the average response time is greater than 12 minutes, a time span that allows murderers, rapists, and car jackers even more time to not just get away with the crime, but ensure they are never implicated or found. Most are not.

Chicagoans who have been terrorized by all of this–that is, those still living–have been conditioned by their indifferent politicos that more gun control and better policing will resolve the terror; and it is a terror. None of the viable mayoral candidates espouse the real, apparent solution; namely, a well-armed, well-trained citizenry is the only answer. The police are not going to protect citizens. Citizens themselves have to be the ultimate deterrent.

Imagine then the horror–for the right-minded, the unchecked glee–of Maj Touré addressing the Chicago City Council, informing them of the historical racism of gun control, how the first act of racial totalitarians has always been to disarm the minorities who they wish to oppress, and how the way to save Chicagoans’ lives and livelihoods now rests in arming and training Chicagoans in how to use guns, not stripping them of their right to do so.

I do not expect such an address to transpire anytime soon, since said government institutions appear to have–in a rather ironic twist in the age of Covid–successfully inoculated themselves from common sense and non-statist solutions. No–another study, another commission, another panel must be convened.

Of course, the other surefire way of abating crime here–that is, drug legalization–would reduce crime to a dribble, but everyone seems to lack the imagination and courage to go that far. Readily available firearms in every hand or back pocket that wants them, first.

Until that dribble then, a man, a Chicagoan can dream, right? Indeed, black guns matter so much that they are often a matter of life or death, regardless of how many pearls are clutched in Lakeview or Kenilworth at the idea.