Well, my my my, as my favorite true-life TV detective likes to say. It turns out that Democrats actually appreciate borders … as long as they can distract from their own failed progressive governance.
Donald Trump’s successful deployment of National Guard troops to support law enforcement in Washington, DC demonstrates how crime can be greatly reduced with more law enforcement resources and broken-windows policing and prosecutorial policies. That success has even pushed Mayor Muriel Bowser into a far more accommodating position than her fellow Democrats, especially those in sanctuary states and cities like Illinois and Chicago. Democrats from the Land of Lincoln have never respected borders or found anything wrong with leaving them open, at least when it comes to the states that border Mexico.
When it comes to the border closest to Chicago, suddenly, Dems like Governor J.B. Pritzker, Mayor Brandon Johnson, former mayor Lori Lightfoot, and Senator Dick Durbin want border reinforcements to protect Chicago from Indiana. No, seriously:
Durbin: “There’s too damn many guns in Chicago, and they’re coming in from other states like Indiana… [Trump] has eliminated the people who are supposed to make sure these gun dealers are held to the law.”
The Democrat narrative is settled:
Trump, red states and gun store… https://t.co/7ZkMje9uRS pic.twitter.com/V1gH0bpNJE
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) September 3, 2025
Pritzker tried the same argument last week, and Johnson offered up the same lame excuse on Tuesday:
“We will never be able to end gun violence in Chicago as long as the president continues to allow tens of thousands of guns to be trafficked into our state and our city,” Johnson claimed during a Tuesday press conference with Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. “The vast majority of guns do not come from Chicago. They are not made in Cook County. They are not bought in the state of Illinois. These guns come from red states. They are coming from Indiana. They are coming from Mississippi. They are coming from Louisiana. And that is the harsh reality, whether Republicans like it or not.”
The harsh reality is that Chicago didn’t suddenly descend into violent crime during the last seven months of the Trump administration. It has been in hellhole status for decades, but the problem accelerated in 2020 and subsequent years. To buy this explanation is to believe the world got created on January 20, 2025, and/or that Chicago existed as some sort of Eden before Trump’s inauguration.
It had very little to do with ATF policies and much more to do with progressive Defund the Police policies and the ascent of progressive prosecutors who refuse to prosecute criminals. Illinois Policy produced the crime rate data for Chicago in 2024 that covered the preceding decade, and the results are astonishing:
The number of violent crimes grew to its highest level in a decade last year, but the arrest rate dropped, according to a new analysis from the Illinois Policy Institute.
In 2023, violent crime was 11.5% higher than in 2022. Two of the largest factors contributing to the rise in crime came from a decade-high 30,501 instances of vehicle thefts and carjackings, and 22,569 cases of assault in 2023.
Homicides were down 14% compared with 2022 levels, but with 625 homicides the city still experienced 45% more murders than a decade earlier.
They charted it so that even Durbin can understand it:
This doesn’t include homicides, which wouldn’t budge the Y-axis based on its scale anyway. Illinois Policy covers those specifically in the excerpt, and generally further into its analysis.They also noted that while these crimes were rapidly increasing between 2020 and 2023, law enforcement response went in the other direction under the city’s progressive leadership:
The institute analysis showed a 18% increase in violent crimes since 2013, with a 33% decline in the number of arrests. Arrest rates hit their lowest levels in a decade in 2023, with just 10.8% of violent crimes resulting in an arrest, nearly half the rate of arrests from 2013.
Was this all just the fault of Indiana? Or did those arrest rates decline because of hostility toward law enforcement by progressive mayors like Lightfoot and Johnson, as well as neglect from Governor Pritzker? One thing is for sure — it had nothing to do with Donald Trump, who was out of office in that period.
Now Democrats demand protection from Indiana, Louisiana, and maybe even Idaho. Who knows? The real truth revealed by this data is that Democrats should get the wall they want around Chicago, but for our protection, not theirs. And maybe we need to keep Snake Plissken on call, too. IYKYK.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
Help us continue to report on and expose the Democrats’ gun control policies and schemes. Join Hot Air VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership!
