Jeff Wartman

After the recent Supreme Court decision striking down the Chicago hand gun ban, Chicago city officials immediately made it well known that they intended to propose new gun control measures.  Those new regulations were approved by the Chicago City Council yesterday in a unanimous vote.  However, the shockingly dangerous views espoused by a few of the council members show that they still do not get it.

From the Sun-Times:

“I find it hard to believe that the Supreme Court justices that voted to strike our handgun laws have spent any time in the communities that many of us represent,” Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) said.

“There’s no way if they knew the violence our young people face every day that they could decide this was a reasonable course of action.”

Excuse me?  The handgun ban has been in place for 30 years, and gun violence was always present.  The fact that guns were so widespread in Chicago is proof that gun bans are completely, and totally ineffective. Are the council members so blinded by their ideology that they cannot see how much of a failure the policy has been?

Mayor Daley often spoke about how the gun ban protected first responders to accidents.  However, I recently spoke to a Chicago EMT who often works in the crime ravaged areas in the city’s south side.  He told me that one lesson that is learned early on the job is to knock on doors while standing off to the side, because of how widespread illegal guns are.  The first responders already know the truth — that the proliferation of illegal guns in Chicago needs to be addressed not with disarming the people who follow the law, but with laws and regulations that target the criminals.  In a recent editorial, the Chicago Tribune makes a few recommendations:

But let’s also look hard at how vigorously we enforce the laws when gangbangers and ex-convicts get caught with guns on the street. These offenders pose the greatest danger. Yet cops complain that the courts are often willing to plea bargain gun crimes into lesser offenses.

Federal and county prosecutors have more aggressively pursued criminals who use guns. One result: more federal prosecutions, and more long federal prison sentences, for many of those gun offenders. Mayor Daley should convene a summit of the federal and county prosecutors who conduct that cooperative effort — along with front-line supervisors of the local and federal agencies that combat gun crimes — to make sure this cooperative effort in metropolitan Chicago is as muscular as it can be. This would be a meeting for the top law enforcement men and women on the street.

Yes, guns can be a danger in the home, and the city’s new ordinance will lessen that danger. But guns are a pure menace in the hands of thugs on the street. Knowing with certainty that if you get caught doing the crime, you’ll do the time, can be a powerful deterrent to gunplay. Ensuring that certainty also has the rare power to united gun-rights and gun-control activists in making Chicago a safer city.

Reasonable people want reasonable guns laws — no reasonable person wants complete anarchy in our gun laws.  We can all debate various ways to help stop violence in America’s cities, and reasonable guns laws are a part of that.  However, to completely disarm law abiding citizens isn’t the way to do it.

One more reminder — the Frankfort Township Republican Organization fundraiser is next Tuesday night!  The details are below.  If you’d like to attend, please give me a call at 708-543-7381 or e-mail jeffwartman@gmail.com if you’d like to purchase tickets or sponsorships.  I appreciate your help, and look forward to speaking with you!

Frankfort Township Republican Organization Fundraiser
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010
6pm – 9pm
CD & Me (23320 S. LaGrange Road, Frankfort)
$35 individual ticket / $50 couple tickets. (includes dinner)
Cash bar

While I’m generally not a “protest” type of guy,  I decided to attend a demonstration I heard about in downtown Joliet across from Debbie Halvorson‘s office.  It was an interesting experience to say the least, and I wanted to share some thoughts from the front lines.

(Note:  For the sake of brevity, I’m going to use the term “Obamacare” to describe the general plan put forward by the President.  It’s not intended to be an insult.  Besides, Democrats have been using the term “Reaganomics” to describe supply side economics for decades, so they have no room to lecture on using a term like this)

***

After driving up, I noticed something that was half-expcted:  the anti-Obamacare group which I came out to stand with was joined by an organized group across the street demonstrating in favor of Obamacare.  I suppose word got out that we were going to do this, so the Democrats responded with their own group.  Seems reasonable.

There were some very interesting differences between the sides, however.  After hearing Nancy Pelosi and other Democrat officials describe the anti-Obamacare protestors as engaging in “astroturfing” and being funded by the wealthy and the RNC, the look of the protests told a different story.  On the anti-Obamacare side, every single sign I saw were homemade.  On the pro-Obamacare side, 90% of the signs I saw were professional poltical signs, and they were all identical.  While I don’t think the type of sign you’re holding discounts your point of view, one thing is indisputable:  Pelosi’s assertion that the anti-Obamacare protestors are well funded is uninformed.

***

At the event, I sent out two twitter messages that read:

At a protest against Obamacare…a pro-Obamacare group across the street…everyone screaming at each other. What does this accomplish?
about 5 hours ago from txt

Neither side innocent. Both sides just screaming at each other. Screaming across the street at each other has never changed anyone’s mind
about 5 hours ago from txt

I stand behing those remarks.  Two groups, standing on opposite sides of the street, screaming at the top of their lungs, have never in the history of mankind actually changed anyone’s mind.  Early on in the rally, I was struck with the thought that both sides were wasting their time. I stand firm against any type of socialized medicine or single payer health care systems, but I was just struck at the senselessness of standing on a street corner screaming at one another.

***

If we’re going to succeed in reform, which everyone agrees we need, we need to alter our tactics.  I understand that people get emotional.  I understand people have strong feelings.  But if we’re going to have a debate, it needs to be civil and it needs to stick to the facts.  No one wants the status quo — Obama is attempting a sales job where he’s trying to paint the Republicans as the party of the status quo and the party of obstruction.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Republicans like myself recognize that the system is broken.  Reform is needed.  We have ideas on the table and we’re ready to talk.

While I’ve lost the link, the Daily Southtown did publish a letter to the Editor I wrote last Tuesday.  I have reprinted it below.

In response to Lauren Fitzpatrick’s article on June 28th titled, “Southland moderates split on Obama energy bill,” it is insulting to call Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson a moderate.  While she ran as one in the 2008 general election, she has voted as a carbon copy of Nancy Pelosi since Rep. Halvorson arrived in the House of Representatives.  After pledging to oppose Cap-and-Trade legislation during the 2008 election, she has now bowed to Pelosi and Obama and broke her promise not to support Cap-and-Trade, which she referred to as a “bad idea.”  The citizens of the 11th Congressional district need to stand up and recognize that Rep. Halvorson is not a moderate.  She is decidedly far-left and will continue to vote with Nancy Pelosi as long as she is a member of Congress.  If we want moderate and common sense representation, we need to look elsewhere.

Jeff Wartman
Mokena, IL

h/t Club For Growth

“It is a fundamental principle of our country that the people are sovereign. While they recognize the undeniable authority of the state, they have established as its instrument a Government of limited powers. They hold inviolate in their own hands the jurisdiction over their own freedom and the ownership of their own property. Neither of these can be impaired except by due process of law. The wealth of our country is not public wealth, but private wealth. It does not belong to the Government, it belongs to the people. The Government has no justification in taking private Property except for a public purpose. It is always necessary to keep these principles in mind in the laying of taxes and in the making of appropriations. No right exists to levy on a dollar, or to order the expenditure of a dollar, of the money of the people, except for a necessary public purpose duly authorized by the Constitution. The power over the purse is the power over liberty.”