Robberies, burglaries and car thefts have each dropped by more than twenty percent this year. Homicides have also decreased. In the first quarter of 2014, the city’s homicide rate hit a fifty-six year low.
These trends directly contradict the predictions of Chicago’s anti-gun Police superintendent Gerry McCarthy, who said that concealed carry would make the city more dangerous.
“When people say concealed carry, I say Trayvon Martin,” McCarthy told Chicago’s WVON-AM radio in 2013. “The answer to guns is not more guns, and just simply putting guns in people’s hands is going to lead to more tragedy.”
Now that the statistics have proven him wrong, McCarthy is trying to take credit by saying that the dropping crime rate is due to “intelligent policing strategies.”
Richard Pearson, the executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, says that McCarthy is simply trying to cover for his wrongheaded predictions.
“Police haven’t changed one tactic,” he told The Washington Times. “It isn’t any coincidence crime rates started to go down when concealed carry was permitted. Just the idea that the criminals don’t know who’s armed and who isn’t has a deterrence effect.”
Pearson expects that more than 100,000 Illinois residents will have permits by the end of the year. Cook County, which includes Chicago, currently has the largest number of concealed carry applications in the state.
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