{"id":79640,"date":"2022-04-06T10:29:40","date_gmt":"2022-04-06T15:29:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=79640"},"modified":"2022-04-06T10:29:40","modified_gmt":"2022-04-06T15:29:40","slug":"79640","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=79640","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hypocrisy of Gun Control Elitists<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2020, then-presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg was\u00a0asked<\/a>\u00a0how he could continue to demand gun control while being protected by private guards equipped with the same firearms and magazines that he wanted to ban others from owning. \u201cDoes your life matter more than mine or my family\u2019s or these people\u2019s?\u201d Bloomberg\u2019s response, in essence, was that he was not an ordinary person. He was a celebrity and billionaire who received more threats than most people: \u201cThat just happens when you are the mayor of New York City or you are very wealthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, another big-city Democrat politician known for pushing\u00a0gun control<\/a>\u00a0on the lower orders was being shielded by a small army of police officers, presumably at the taxpayers\u2019 expense. The\u00a0Chicago Sun-Times<\/a>\u00a0recently disclosed that a special police security detail, Unit 544, was created two years ago to protect Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, her home and office, and to \u201coversee her personal bodyguard detail.\u201d The special unit consists of approximately 71 officers, in addition to the mayor\u2019s existing \u201cseparate personal bodyguard detail\u201d of 20 officers.<\/p>\n

Both cities \u2013 ex-Mayor Bloomberg\u2019s New York City and Lightfoot\u2019s Chicago \u2013 are experiencing horrific surges in violent crime. The most recent \u201cCompStat<\/a>\u201d report from the NYPD indicates rapes, robberies, felony assaults, burglaries, grand larceny, and auto thefts have all increased significantly as compared to the same time last year, and the Chicago Police Department\u2019s (CPD) own \u201cCompStat<\/a>\u201d contains the same dismal message.<\/p>\n

While privileged politicians float above this wave of criminality, untroubled by threats to person or property, less exalted individuals are forced to rely on whatever police resources may be available or become their own version of Unit 544.<\/p>\n

Last week in Chicago, for instance, a 70-year-old Uber driver, threatened by robbers who then carjacked his vehicle,\u00a0had to wait<\/a>\u00a075 minutes before police could respond. Police assigned to serve the area had been drastically reduced to 261 officers, the \u201clowest monthly staffing level for the district since at least August 2017,\u201d so no one was available to take the assignment until the next shift began. The problem isn\u2019t restricted to that police district: overall, more than 660 CPD officers\u00a0retired in 2021<\/a>, almost double the number of retirees in 2018, and recruiting of new officers\u00a0dropped<\/a>\u00a0during the pandemic. Carjacking reports, meanwhile, have set a new monthly\u00a0record<\/a>\u00a0as of February 2022, up 390% from February 2019.<\/p>\n

The impact on public safety is what makes Lightfoot\u2019s private defense force of almost 100 officers all the more outrageous. In 2020, residents had already\u00a0complained<\/a>\u00a0that patrol officers in areas close to Lightfoot\u2019s home were redeployed to the mayor\u2019s residence. It\u2019s at odds with the mayor\u2019s oft-used theme of \u201call hands on deck<\/a>\u201d to address public safety using a \u201ccoordinated and collective effort,\u201d if scores of the deckhands are used for what amounts to private security work. And Lightfoot herself can\u2019t pretend that police resources aren\u2019t affected, because the creation of Unit 544 coincided with her\u00a0proposal<\/a>\u00a0to cut the CPD budget by $80 million as part of addressing a pandemic\u2013related citywide budget shortfall.<\/p>\n

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Lightfoot asserts her special police detail became necessary because in 2020, there was \u201ca significant amount of protests all over the city, and some of them targeted [] my house.\u201d (News reports from 2020 indicate that the protests included, ironically, calls to\u00a0remove police<\/a>\u00a0from schools, for\u00a0reforms<\/a>\u00a0to the CPD, and to\u00a0defund the police<\/a>.) A 2020 news report\u00a0quotes<\/a>\u00a0Lightfoot defending, as well, the closing off of residential streets around her home to activists, because of threats to her safety. \u201c[T]he situation can\u2019t be compared to protests at former mayor Rahm Emanuel\u2019s home given the pandemic\u2026 This is a different time \u2013 like no other.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Catanzara, president of Chicago\u2019s Fraternal Order of Police,\u00a0observes<\/a>\u00a0that \u201c[w]hile murders are soaring, while districts are barebones for manpower, all that matters [to Lightfoot] is protecting her castle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, it is completely reasonable for Lightfoot to take lawful measures to protect herself and her family, the same as anyone else, but her situation is arguably no more dire nor compelling than the crisis of crime faced by every other Chicago resident today.<\/p>\n

The problem is that the mayor, and\u00a0others like her<\/a>, are the same anti-gun advocates who see no contradiction between demanding ever more pointless restrictions on the ability of constituents to legally access firearms for self-defense, and ensuring their own safety with assigned police bodyguards and armed security. Ordinary citizens don\u2019t need guns because the police will protect them \u2013 even if crime climbs to levels not seen in decades and there\u2019s upward of an hour\u2019s wait on a 911 call.<\/p>\n

These people would have you believe that this isn\u2019t gun control elitism in action \u2013 it\u2019s just that they aren\u2019t like you and me. After all, if you don\u2019t have bread you can always eat cake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Hypocrisy of Gun Control Elitists In 2020, then-presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg was\u00a0asked\u00a0how he could continue to demand gun control while being protected by private guards equipped with the same firearms and magazines that he wanted to ban others from owning. \u201cDoes your life matter more than mine or my family\u2019s or these people\u2019s?\u201d Bloomberg\u2019s … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,21,8,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goobermint","category-hypocrisy","category-rkba","category-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79640"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79641,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79640\/revisions\/79641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}