Residents of cities where crime has spiraled amid deep police cuts are being denied their right to defend themselves just when they need it more than ever, say gun rights supporters.
The nation’s strictest gun laws have long been in the urban centers of blue states. With many of those cities moving to defund their own police departments, violent crime is leaving an unarmed citizenry at the mercy of outlaws, one Second Amendment backer said.
“If you’re primarily disarming the most law-abiding good citizens who obey the law, you make it easier for criminals to go and commit crimes,” John Lott, a former Trump administration adviser and the author of More Guns, Less Crime, told the Washington Examiner.
The gun debate is not new, but the crime wave that followed last summer’s movement to slash municipal police forces has given it a new urgency.
In Minneapolis, where George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a police officer spawned the “defund the police” movement, total violent crimes are up nearly 15% year-to-date, with the homicide rate twice what it was last year. The city saw a 21% year-over-year increase of violent crime in 2020.
Homicides rose in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles in 2020 by 41%, 50%, and 21%, respectively, over 2019. Other cities of varying sizes saw increases too.
Lott says it is no coincidence that crime has soared in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle, all of which have all supported or started the process of reducing police funding.
“You have had the biggest spikes in the areas where police are not being allowed to do their job either because of orders or because of changes in budgets,” Lott said. “It’s not really shocking to me that you see the increase.
“I would have been surprised if you hadn’t seen an increase in crime,” he added.
In Minneapolis, where the city council voted last June to dismantle its police department and subsequently cut the force’s budget, eight residents took the city to court. They argue that the spike in crime is a self-inflicted wound caused by foolish and illegal policy.
“These individuals are longtime residents of the city [and] taxpayers, lived in this neighborhood, have suffered bullets through their walls and had people shot on their blocks and dying,” Doug Seaton, the president of the Upper Midwest Law Center that is representing the petitioners, told the Washington Examiner. “They were well acquainted with violence that’s been the outcome of this preposterous defund the police campaign.”
Seaton criticized the city council’s proposed “department of community safety,” which would take the police department’s place under the council-passed measure.
“When you’re dealing with violent shooters in the neighborhood, psychologists, social workers, and neighborhood volunteers are not going to be the ticket,” Seaton said.
If the police can’t always protect citizens, it makes sense to allow law-abiding gun owners to defend themselves, says Lott. At least one big-city police chief agrees.
“I changed my orientation real quick,” retiring Detroit Police Chief James Craig, who was referring to how his views changed following stints on the force in both Los Angeles and Maine, said in 2014. “Maine is one of the safest places in America. Clearly, suspects knew that good Americans were armed.”
Craig, who has frequently urged Motor City residents to obtain firearms legally and get related training, is a popular and outspoken critic of the “defund the police” movement. He is mulling a run for governor.
Democrats’ reaction to the disturbing trend of rising crime has been to call for even more restrictions on gun ownership.
“It’s been 17 years since the original Assault Weapons Ban expired, and the plague of gun violence continues to grow in this country,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein said earlier this year, when she introduced a new measure that would ban assault weapons.
But blaming rising crime on guns and ignoring the effects of defunding police budgets is missing the point, said Lott.
“My question would be, what changed last year with regard to gun control that could explain [increased homicide rates]?” Lott said. “If gun control or the lack of it is responsible for the spike, what changed last year that coincided with the big increase that we saw in murders?”
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The sum total of policing policy changes, defunding initiatives, and strict gun laws leaves people with few options to protect themselves as violence surges, Lott insisted.
“Law enforcement isn’t allowed to do its job to protect people, and then, we have politicians trying to pass or that have passed laws that prevent individuals … from being able to go and protect themselves,” he said. “If my research convinces me of anything, it’s that people who are most likely victims of violent crime are the ones who benefit the most from being able to go and protect themselves.”
