To find out what can actually make our cities safer, we decided to take a deep look at Detroit. Now, Detroit is no shining city on a hill—it actually took the top spot on the FBI’S violent-crime roster in both 2018 and 2019. It is and has been a troubled city for a lot of reasons. Still, city leaders’ recent response hasn’t been to simply blame American freedom for violence perpetrated by criminals. To understand how they have responded, we interviewed Detroit’s now-former police chief, James Craig.

Before hearing from Craig, however, it’s worth getting a little background. As Craig has explained before—much to the chagrin of national mainstream-media outlets—there are already thousands of gun laws on the books and many of them are not effectively enforced. Even when criminals are caught, many manage to plea-bargain down their offenses or aren’t prosecuted. Even those convicted of violent offenses often serve less than three years behind bars.

Meanwhile, gun-control advocates pretend that a so-called “universal” background check law would somehow reduce violent crime. They say this even though criminals already get around the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Most guns recovered from crime scenes were stolen or illegally purchased. Also, every year, over 10,000 people are referred to the federal authorities for lying on a background-check form to get a gun—a felony. Yet every year, the federal government only prosecutes a tiny fraction of these people.

The consequences haven’t been trivial. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) calculated in 2018 that 10-21% of those who lie to pass background checks may go on to commit other gun crimes, while a 2008 Department of Justice (DOJ) survey estimated the risk of someone committing a crime after failing a background check is 28% higher. Shockingly, high-crime cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York have also ranked lowest when it comes to prosecuting gun crimes. Sometimes this is the result of political priorities. Under the Trump administration, for example, federal prosecutions rose 43%, according to a 2020 DOJ report; there were similar increases under the Bush administration, according to figures from Trac Reports. Under former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, however, federal gun-crime prosecutions declined. At the time, President Obama’s excuse was insufficient resources. (Tellingly, he also commuted the sentences of over a hundred felons convicted for gun crimes.)

In 2013, then-Vice President Joe Biden complained that “we simply don’t have the time or manpower to prosecute everybody who lies on a form.” Once elected president, Biden began demanding Congress expand background checks to, among other things, stop people from loaning guns to friends, trying out another person’s gun at a range or selling or giving a gun to a friend, family member or other private citizen. This “universal” background-check idea could only be theoretically enforced if the federal government somehow also had a national gun-registry scheme in place—if “universal” background checks were ever passed by Congress and signed by a president, a national gun registry would be the next thing politicians like Biden would be demanding.

So, What’s Up in Detroit?

Read more HERE.