Chicago cop: Get a gun, know how to use it

Chicago cop: Get a gun, know how to use it

“Today, the man, or the store, or the home without a gun is a patsy, a soft touch for the hoods,” Tom Newburgh wrote in “Today a Gun Could Save Your Life.”
Newburgh’s credentials to make such an authoritative statement?
I ought to know, because I'm a detective on the Chicago Police Department…
That is, he was. He wrote this article half a century ago.
Regular Gun Rights Examiner readers know that every month, GUNS, the magazine I write the "Rights Watch" column for, posts the corresponding monthly issue from 50 years ago as a free download on its website, giving us a fascinating window into a past some of us are old enough to remember.
Detective Newburgh shows us how far the Windy City has devolved:
As a law enforcement officer, I wish that every honest citizen owned a gun and knew how to use it. I wish there were more shooting organizations, more arms practice by civilians- men and women. I'm not in the least afraid of a gun in the hands of an honest, competent citizen. That citizen and his gun could make my job a lot easier.
An old Texas Ranger visiting New York City was once asked what he'd do to check big city crime. He said, "I'd teach the police to shoot, first. Then I'd arm the honest people and teach them to shoot. It was straight-shooting lawmen aided by armed and straight-shooting citizens who broke up the tough gangs in the old days. It could work today."
It was citizen resistance that smashed the Jesse James gang at Northfield. What town, I wonder, is similarly ready--for today's hoods?