The Fourth of July weekend offers an opportunity to celebrate America — to gather with friends and family for food and fireworks.
It marks a time when we, as a nation, can reflect on our great country's origins, while honoring the values and ideals which gave birth to it.
Unfortunately, July Fourth is now turning into a stark annual reminder of the damage the Democrats’ extremist left-wing policies are doing to the homeland we so love.
This year’s Fourth of July weekend saw over 500 shootings in nearly every state with more than 200 people killed.
Last year’s July 4th weekend was similarly, if slightly less, bloody, with just under 200 persons killed.
If we are to truly address this country’s violent crime and gun violence epidemic, we need to address the real problems fueling it: a broken culture, and a broken criminal justice system.
Gun control advocates and anti-Second Amendment activists would have us believe that firearms are the sole problem.
That line of argument simply doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
The fact is that Americans have always had guns — lots of them — and in decades past, they were even easier to obtain than they are now.
Let's think about it.
A few generations ago there were no federal background checks, no FFLs (Federal Firearm Licenses), no waiting periods, no magazine restrictions, and in most states west of the Delaware Water Gap, 17 and 18 year-olds drove to school in pick-up trucks with shot guns and long guns sitting in the rear windows. The gun violence we now witness annually on the 4th of July weekend in cities across America, was unthinkable.
The truth is that we’ve known for a long time that guns aren’t the real issue.
Gun violence has plagued inner cities at epidemic levels since the 1980s, and most of the urban areas that see the worst gun violence are in states with some of the harshest anti-gun laws on the books.
The real root cause of the violence? Broken families.
The root cause of gun violence?
A failing criminal justice system coupled with an anti-police culture.
Indeed, the facts have been staring us in the face for years.
A 1995 report — that’s nearly three decades ago — by the Heritage Foundation revealed that the rise in violent crime paralleled the rise in fatherless families.
Their state-by-state analysis showed that a 10% increase in the number of children living in single-parent households led to a 17% increase in juvenile crime.
Conversely, the study revealed that, even if raised in high-crime urban areas, over 90% of children from stable, two-parent homes did not become criminals.
Of course, the Democrats have been ignoring facts like these for as long as they’ve been available, largely because their economic and social policies create the very urban environments that breed violent crime, and also because to admit these facts would undermine their big lie that the mere presence of guns is the problem.
It is however true that while inner-city gun violence has been a problem for decades, July 4th weekends in which hundreds of people across the country are shot and killed does seem to be a relatively recent phenomenon that began when the Democratic Party, under then-President Barack Obama, began pushing their racist and anti-police rhetoric; a theme and rhetoric that over the last 14 years have now only gotten worse with the push for "bail reform," progressive left wing prosecutors emboldening urban violence, and the defund the police movement — diminishing cities' law enforcement manpower, training, and resources.
This is the sick reality.
Having spent a significant amount of the 20th century creating the conditions that lead to urban violence, the Democrats have spent the better part of the 21st century waging war on law enforcement's ability to combat that violence.
Officers and agents need to be given the freedom and power to confront violent criminals head on in the very neighborhoods those criminals terrorize.
More gun control is not the answer, and proof lies in the renaissance of New York City under Mayor Rudolph "Rudy" Giuliani.
From 1994-2002, under his watch, we achieved:
- A 70% decrease in murder
- A 65% decrease in violent crime
- A 74% decrease in felony shootings
- A 13% reduction in officer shootings
- A 11% increase in gun seizures
The preceding represents unparalleled achievements in the largest city in the nation, with the toughest gun laws, at a time when there was five times more violence than today, averaging more than 2,000 murders per year.
If we want to return America’s cities to peace, then we need to restore respect for the family, and respect for law and order.
It’s just that simple.
Bernard B. Kerik was the 40th Police Commissioner of the New York City Police Department and is a New York Times bestselling author. Read Bernard Kerik's Reports — More Here.
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