Tio Hardiman (courtesy gapoersblock.com)

“We cannot continue to blame the legal gun owners for the gang violence in cities like Chicago, Decatur, Peoria, and many other cities in Illinois. Thousands of young men have become locked into a mentality that using a gun should be their first and only response to any conflict or perceived threat. This would be considered more of a thinking problem than a serious gun problem. Due to that level of thinking, the old saying ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’ holds true.” – Tio Hardiman, Understanding Gun Violence in Illinois [via huffingtonpost.com]

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35 COMMENTS

  1. Yeah… What he’s really saying is tie legal gun owners in more red tape so that we can avoid dealing with our gang and drug problems.

  3. Huffpo admitting that lawful gun owners arent the problem? Glad I was sitting down while I read the article. But as always they managed to sidestep and basically call for more hoops to jump through for gun owners, mention the wild west, and blame the problem on out of state guns. Because theft of a firearm and straw purchases never happen in Illinois.

  4. Mr Harriman, the gang violence is due to two problems.One, no self respecting man is going to live on a government handout.Two, the only employment opportunities in the ghetto ,due to anti business socialist policies , are illegal activities like drug dealing.Since gangsters can’t insure their products and cash against theft, and they can’t settle disputes in court, the only alternative to discourage robbery is deadly force.

    Repudiate the social welfare philosophy, start encouraging businesses to return to Chicago, and jettison the patronage machine and its oppressive tax structure. Going after guns is like knocking up a woman and closing your bank account to avoid child support.

  5. He’s just putting a new twist for Universal Background Checks in this article. Say something that the pro-gun crowd wants to hear, then say prevent criminal from obtaining guns through “loopholes”. In other words “I support the 2nd Amendment, but…”

  6. A pearl of wisdom plucked from a pile of hogsh!t.

    Consider:
    “Now some people will argue that guns are the problem but the truth of the matter is there is no data to support the fact that legal gun owners contribute to the overall gun violence statistics in Illinois.” – How can something be a “fact” if there is no data to support it?

    “Thousands of young men have become locked into a mentality that using a gun should be their first and only response to any conflict or perceived threat.” – The reason they are “locked into” that mentality is that they make their living selling a product that is prohibited. Calling the cops is out of the question. Doing so would land them in jail.

    “The epidemic of gun violence has been passed down since the “cowboy and Indian” days in America and we have to work harder to help people understand that it’s okay to walk away from a bad situation before hurting somebody.” – Really? Is he blaming violence on kids playing cowboys and Indians or is he blaming it on the actual Indian Wars? Either way, what does that have to do with inner city black and Hispanic gang violence? Did white suburban kids stop playing the game 50 years ago? And what “work” is he suggesting we try harder at? Maybe we should just hop in our car and drive to south Chicago and stop a random man in baggy pants and say “Dude! You can walk away before somebody gets hurt!”?

    “However, the illegal gun market is a major industry and lawmakers should explore ways to work with different states to make sure that any illegal guns purchased in their state are dealt with in the swiftest way possible. We have to work harder to stop the flow of illegal guns from crossing over into Illinois.” – Ah, the money shot. It’s not our fault it’s yours for not supporting civilian disarmament in your state!

    Typical PuffHo piece.

  8. Yes, thousands of young men are locked into the mentality that they should kill their rivals to protect turf, or kill people who do not pay. The idea that you can defend your territory and business with brute force is definitely something new to the last two generations. It’s completely different than the italian mob bosses in the 1920s who used to drive through Chicago and gun down their rivals.

  9. Funny things happen when socioeconomic stressors are relieved. Domestic violence and child abuse decrease, substance abuse and theft decrease. Desperate people do desperate things, and if you treat the problem (poverty) rather than the symptoms (criminal gun use, drugs, prostitution, etc.,) things get better. As an educated man who has studied sociology, psychology, history, and criminal justice, I notice none of the reform programs that have worked include disarming the populace. Some of the farthest right 2nd Amendment supporters bitch about crime and call for a hardline against it without acknowledging the seeds are sown in the economic divide we have created in our nation. High crime, low income areas should be aided to boost growth, but in the interim gun buybacks should be replaced by helping to arm the innocent impoverished against those who cast their lot with a criminal lifestyle. If Scruffy McDirtbag thought the old fart in the Caddy at the corner had a piece, maybe his car-jacking days will end and he will look for other means of income until the new factory opens.

    • ?? libs always use a lot of words but can’t say plain what there saying. thats whats wrong I’m just saying

      • You seem to have the same problem, you illiterate jackwagon.

        Why don’t you brush up on summa dat book lernin’ you’re afraid of and come back when you have something to say? We’ll be waiting.

    • We’ve been “aiding” these enclaves for decades, and it doesn’t work.

      See my comment several below – nothing will work but the return of working-class jobs, the types of jobs that used to make these places thrive, and kept young men and women out of trouble with money in their pockets to boot.

      This cannot be done without a serious look at how our foreign trade economy operates.

      These people cannot be expected to live on McJobs, and I don’t mean increase their minimum wage, like so many are pushing for. I mean serious tariffs on Chinese goods, and abandoning failed agreements like NAFTA.

      • Yeah, a 9-5 job, that’ll work…for hoods who’ve learned to live easy and free – off of others.

        • Drug dealin’ ain’t easy. Especially down on street level in da hood. It’s a rather high-stress existence, always worried about getting robbed, cops, getting robbed by cops…

          Seriously, guys on the low rungs might make $500 a week, and most would trade it for a decent paying factory job in a heartbeat.

  11. FACT-At least 50% of all gun crimes including gun murders are committed by black males.(In certain cities such as Chicago, Gary, Youngstown, Charlotte, Miami, Birmingham, Oakland, St. Louis ect. that percentage can be as high as 80%)
    FACT-The percentage of black males in our total US population is only 7.5%

    And remember, the 50-80% does not include suicides, justified killings, police killings and accidental deaths. Just MURDER. So when we deconstruct the 30k a year killed by firearms to only include MURDER the numbers go down to like 3,500 a year.
    3,500 a year murdered. In a nation with over 320 million people, with over 400 million firearms, a melting pot to boot, and we have on average only 3,500 real gun murders annually. Of which 50-80% of the 3,500 are committed by black males.

    Where is the problem? Those numbers are fantastic! The only issue when looking at the numbers this way is the 50-80% black male crime, because without it we’d only have about 700-1700 actual gun murders annually. But both numbers to me are more than acceptable for the privilege and right to live in thee last powerful nation on earth that gives us the right to bear arms.
    Gungrabbers like Piers and others always use the examples of UK, Australia, Germany or other nations with no gun rights or very restricted ones, all of which has populations much less than ours, and they use these bogus stats and compare them to the US which is a nation that cannot be compared to any other with any issue.
    The list of school, mall and spree/mass type shootings is what stirs the in minds of the citizens the most. Much like jetliners crashing and killing everyone aboard they tend to be so dramatic that most forget that about 90 people a day are killed on our roadways. The media and politicians use this to install the fear that these shootings are happening everywhere everyday when in reality they are extremely rare, and totally preventable by allowing nationwide conceal carry and arming teachers and staff who are willing and able.

    The real truth is there is no gun problem in the USA. The only gun issue that should be important is the one about how many politicians are attempting to take the right to bears arms away.

  12. Gang violence won’t end until there’s jobs.

    The jobs won’t come back to the urban centers without manufacturing.

    Manufacturing won’t come back to the US until we end trade with China.

    We won’t end trade with China because they own the majority of our debt and are propping up our currency.

    China begins gradually dumping US treasuries and stockpiling dollars, and our answer is instead to print more money, increase inflation, and thereby deepen the demand for more living-wage manufacturing jobs that still don’t exist.

    It goes full circle, it’s the elephant in the room, and NOBODY WILL TALK ABOUT THIS.

    • I agree with almost everything you laid out, but the China debt thing is just not correct. I know it’s easy to get that mixed up since it’s gets bandied about inaccurately all the time.

      The facts are that China holds about $1.2T of our $12T National Debt. Japan holds about $1.1T.
      Only about 50% of the National Debt is held by foreigners, and a good chunk of that is held by individuals, not their governments.

      China is a massive problem that the entire world must address before it gets too much farther out of hand. But they don’t have quite as much cash leverage as one might think.

        • The strangle-hold on cheap labor and the means of production is something that people should be far more concerned about. The money? Meh, it’s piss in the ocean. We could print an extra $1T and just pay it off. We’ve already spent north of $1T on QE3 alone, and it will probably top $1.5T before they quit.

          Then the next collapse happens.

  13. I was shocked! shocked! to see a HuffPo article that did not blame George Bush and the NRA for Chicago’s murders.

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