'Strong gun laws'--the making of the murder capital of the U.S.

It would seem that the "gun-free paradise" of Chicago is . . . anything but.

As police Supt. Jody Weis returns to the hot seat during a City Council budget hearing today, Chicago is outpacing New York and Los Angeles in 2008 murders.

Chicago, whose population is dwarfed by those cities, posted 426 killings through Tuesday, compared with 417 in New York and 302 in L.A.

But how can this be? The gun laws in Chicago--most of which have been on the books for decades--are (in the aftermath of the Heller decision) the most draconian in the U.S., and we're told so often that "easy access to firearms" is the biggest causative factor in violent crime.

Weis, a career FBI agent, took office this year with a mandate to clean up the department in the wake of several scandals. But murders have risen, and arrests have fallen, on his watch. (Murder is also up, at a lower rate, in New York.)

Under tough questioning at a Council hearing in July, Weis suggested there was a "degree of timidness" among officers afraid of having lawsuits and citizen complaints filed against them.

Yeah--that's the problem, Jody--all those nasty complainers are making Chicago "Only Ones" too "timid" to prevent the murders.

This sounds like the actions of an "intimidated" cop, for example.

. . . and this

. . . and this

. . . and . . . you get the idea.

The article goes on to say that Jody also offers yet another possible explanation--that police are too busy inventorying arrestees'property (as they had agreed to do). In other words, they're too busy doing their jobs to . . . do their jobs.

Gee, I wonder if it would help if the cops' workload could be reduced somehow.

Nah--Forget it Jake, it's Chi-Town*.

UPDATE: Days of Our Trailers has more.