Welcome to the Valentino Chronicle! Thank you for coming to my website.
What you will find here are thoughts from a very overlooked segment of society, The Middle Class Conservative. Here you will find my most recent articles and those published on websites such as CNSnews, Frontpagemag.com and Zogby and World Net Daily.
Also I have links to some of my favorite websites that I hope you'll enjoy as well. Now on to the article of the week :
The knife violence in Britain has reached epidemic proportions according to an article at Dailymail.co.uk, an online news agency in England.
From the story:
SIX stabbed to death in just 24 hours as Blade Britain’s knife epidemic spirals out of control
The scourge of knife crime gripping Britain has reached new depths with six murders across the country in less than 24 hours.
Four of the killings were in London in an appalling day of bloodshed.
Americans recognize the sensational headlines and use of the term epidemic to describe the actions of common criminals because of articles by the U.S. media that use the same format but vilify guns instead of knives. The nature of this type of news reporting makes it obvious they are used to sway public opinion against guns, or knives or the use of self-defense by the average citizen.
Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich recently offered to call out the Illinois National Guard to help Chicago fight the recent spike in violence that has catapulted the City into the national news. Daley didn’t immediately accept the Governor’s offer of help and the two most powerful leaders in Illinois missed the irony of the offer.
There is a reason citizen comes before soldier when describing National Guard members. Illinois National Guard members are simply citizens who are given a gun and told to keep order. So, essentially, both the Governor and Mayor are doing what concealed carry advocates have wanted to do all along, put honest citizens on the streets with guns.
None of the national media outlets caught the irony of Blagojevich’s offer of help to the city either. As a former member of the Ohio National Guard there is no doubt in my mind that members are citizens first and Guard members second. Nobody saw their place in the military as dedicated soldier. Sure, we lived under the threat of being called up and thousands of Guard members have served gallantly in the war on terror.
Make no mistake, however, they are still citizen first and soldiers second.
It may surprise many people to learn that Chicago’s nickname of “Windy City” doesn’t come from the winds that blow off Lake Michigan during the harsh winters, but rather from the windy debates that take place among the city’s political players. After the United States Supreme Court ruled that Washington D.C.’s outright gun ban was unconstitutional, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley did his best to remind people the true reason Chicago is known as the Windy City.
Daley’s wind and whining over the Court’s affirmation of the right to bear arms was a perfect example of his willingness to huff and bluff when he doesn’t get his way. His red-faced diatribe against the Supreme Court cast off any doubt that Daley cares more about his personal fiefdom than the unalienable rights of his bosses – the people.
In an act of grandstanding he claimed the Supreme Court ruling would lead to a return to old west. A common but long since discredited theme of the anti-gunners who claim more guns will lead to a return to shoot-outs in the streets.
The problem with Daley’s rhetoric is Chicago is one of the deadliest cities in the nation which stands in stark contrast to cities with less crime where citizens are allowed to legally carry a gun for self defense. Such legal concealed carry laws shattered the anti-gun myth that guns equaled more crime. Once a few states had success with their concealed carry laws other parts of the country realized gun control laws didn’t equal safer streets and forced their legislatures to allow honest people to carry guns.
In Illinois, where Chicago is the major urban area, Daley has power out of all proportion to his position. So he has personally seen to it that people from Illinois remain at the will and whim of criminals. His decision to put the rights of his government above the rights of the people is the exact reason the Founders saw fit to include the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights. The Founders knew that government would always act in its own best interest and Mayor Daley is a prime example of how government corrupts.
Examples of Mayor Daley’s excessive use of governmental power are long and well documented, but his reaction to a seminal moment in the history of checking governmental aggression is telling.
At this time in our history we live under more government control and more government regulation than anytime in the past. That is often more concentrated at the municipal level where people like Daley can stay under the national radar and rule with impunity.
Using that power to push the people of Chicago to accept his revisionist history of guns in America is yet another abuse of his position. His actions as mayor are a primary reason that being able to keep and bear arms remains a hallowed right. If people like Daley, who believe they give rights to people through government instead of governing through the consent of the people, are allowed to act in their immoral way it will leave the Constitution in tatters.
If there is a singular villain when it comes to using governmental power at will it is Mayor Daley. Over the years he has even gone so far as to bulldoze the runways at Meigs Field, a small airport in Chicago, to fit his dream of what the city should look like. Someone who would act in such a reckless manner would think nothing of defying a court order to end the city’s misguided ban on guns.
Yet, Daley wins in a landslide each year because Chicagoans have few choices due to the unwillingness of good candidates to run for office. We could go even deeper into the city’s morass and discuss the cesspool that is Chicago politics, but there isn’t enough space in any single article to cover it. Daley is supposed to rise above the fray when it comes to protecting the citizens yet he seems incapable of doing so.
Daley is incapable because in his mind he knows better than the people who vote him into office. That is the only possible explanation for his childish tantrum over the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Minutes after the Supreme Court struck down the Washington D.C. ban a lawsuit was filed to overturn the Chicago’s version of a near total gun ban. For someone who grew up there, and knew what it was like to see criminals rule the city, it is like there is now hope that my homeland will be liberated after a long occupation. The people I knew who often lived in fear will hopefully soon have a chance to defend their life and home.
Others will no longer have to make a choice between self-defense and obeying an oppressive law that disarms them in the face of terrifying and barbaric crimes.
Clearly Daley’s priorities are his power first and the safety of his citizens farther down the list - that is if concern for Chicago’s citizens appear on his list of priorities at all. Such a belief is based on the lack of objectivity he shows by ignoring the near limitless evidence that gun control fails as a viable option to reduce crime. Such evidence is so prevalent that to disagree is a clear sign of Daley’s intellectual dishonesty.
He is also happy to let a Supreme Court ruling give his government immunity when the police aren’t able to protect individual citizens from crime. However, he whines like a child when the same Court rules people have a right to keep a gun in their home to assure the self protection Daley can’t be compelled to provide.
The sad fact is Daley clings to gun control and is bitter over the failure of the anti-gun movement to secure a gun free America. When the Supreme Court ruling overturned the Washington D.C. handgun ban and put the Chicago ban in jeopardy he threw a tantrum and looked even more like a fool than normal.
As you can imagine, for a fool of Daley’s stature it wasn’t easy to act in such a ridiculous manner that his current rash of foolishness stands out from his past actions.
(Gerard Valentino is the Buckeye Firearms Association Central Ohio Coordinator and writes for the ValentinoChronicle.com)
As a young boy growing up in Cicero, IL, a suburb of Chicago, I didn’t understand the adulation of Martin Luther King Jr. Maybe my little mind just couldn’t get wrapped around his legacy because my formative years took place long after he died.
Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s the civil rights marches, protests and battles against racism were “ancient history” to me. When I got to high school I saw the black students getting the same chance at success that I had, they often got better deals on tuition and better financial aid when it came time to go to college as well.
Didn’t matter to me, I was determined to live my life without much thought given to affirmative action, quota systems or other policies designed to help the black community overcome the rampant racism that they faced for most of American history. Full Story »
To hear the left scoff at the premise that an armed society is a polite society you would think Americans are uncivilized barbarians just waiting for a chance to shoot each other.Such a backwards thought process isn’t limited to gun control, their distrust of average Americans is rampant in the left’s pantheon of ridiculous beliefs.
Their duplicitous ways are exposed most readily when it comes to guns since they claim to champion the poor and then disarm them in the face of common criminals, and they claim to champion individual freedom except for when it comes to self-defense involving guns. Finally, their absurd notion that if everyone has to carry a gun then it proves society is unsafe flies in the face of common sense. As more people are allowed to carry concealed guns the crime rate and accidental gun death rate still continue to fall.
There is a great deal of angst in the pro-gun movement over the impending ascendancy of anti-gun politicians to the presidency. All three current presidential contenders have serious black marks on their gun resume. Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have long standing ties to the gun movement and want to reinstate the expired ban on semi-automatic rifles. Clinton has often listed her husband’s 1994 assault weapons ban as one of “their” greatest legacies. McCain has for years crusaded to close the mythical gun show loophole and has tried unsuccessfully to ban gun shows completely.
Anti-gun organizations like the Brady gang are quick to point out that the stained pedigree of the three presidential contenders is proof the anti-gun movement is about to rise again.
How many of my home state brethren have to die? When will people like Chicago Mayor Daley and Governor Blagojevich realize they are leaving their citizens at the whim of thugs and the deranged?
The sad truth is they will never get it – they will never learn that their draconian gun policies don’t work. Chicago leads the nation in murders nearly every year, yet Mayor Daley doesn’t get that criminals know Chicagoans are disarmed. The same is true for colleges where students are easy victims, left to die in masse without the ability to defend their life.
The educational ivory tower is instead becoming akin to the Town of London, where people go to die in tragic and often gruesome ways.
Five more of my hometown brethren were killed just outside Chicago at a clothing store in Tinley Park.Unlike many cities, Chicago’s suburban population never admits they are from Cicero, or Naperville, or Westmont, they always say they are from Chicago. Many old northern cities have evolved to the point where the main city became irrelevant, like Detroit, MI or my current hometown, Columbus, OH, yet Chicago has always been central to the suburb’s identity.
The anti-gun culture prevalent in the Chicago Mayoral administration and years of vilifying gun owners is also part of Chicago’s culture. A sad situation that make pro-gun Chicagoans seethe with anger because year after year it is one of the murder capitals of the world. Still, Mayor Richard Daley chooses to disarm Chicago’s law-abiding population without doing a thing to stem the tide of murders, rapes and robberies committed against those he disarmed.
Daley’s lack of understanding that criminals prefer unarmed victims, is disturbing to say the least.
Over the years the anti-gun left has spread a lot of disinformation about guns and gun owners. Aided by a complicit establishment media they have been largely unchallenged in the court of public opinion. Even though it seems like there is a conspiracy between anti-gun groups and the establishment media to guns, nothing can be further from the truth.
The sad truth is both groups honestly believe the crap they disseminate about guns.
After Richard Nixon’s election win for the presidency in 1968, a news reporter famously noted that she couldn’t believe he won since she didn’t know anybody that voted for him. Although the incident happened well before my time, if it happened it all, it is illustrative of how the establishment media thinks.
Our second interview of pro-gun politicians was with State Senator Tim Schaffer, a long time defender of the 2nd Amendment, and friend to gun owners in Ohio. Senator Schaffer followed a productive career in the Ohio House, where he voted in favor of each pro-gun bill that was introduced, with his new position in the Senate.
In his short time in the Senate he has started off much the way he ended in the Ohio House, with resolute support of self-defense rights and Ohioans right to keep and bear arms.
Chatting with Senator Schaffer left no doubt about his strong feelings for gun rights and gun voters based on his statement that, “pro-gun voters mean the world to me, they are resolute, dependable, they say what they mean, mean what they say and are dedicated to preserving constitutional rights.”
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