For mysterious reasons, Democrats have gone out of their way to encourage violent crime in the past few years, deifying lowlife criminals, hamstringing local law enforcement, and allowing violent sociopaths to run amok. Montgomery, Alabama Mayor Steven Reed may have given the game away while attempting to pass the buck for the Democrat crime crisis:

After a recent slew of shootings in Montgomery that have killed or permanently maimed innocent bystanders, hundreds of residents have swarmed Montgomery city council meetings, criticizing the city’s leadership and calling for action. …

Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed, his chief of staff Chip Hill, and Montgomery District Attorney Daryl Bailey blamed the crime wave on the legislature passing permitless carry.

Allowing law-abiding citizens to defend themselves from the criminals Democrats so aggressively champion is what causes violent crime. Disarm them and the violence will disappear.

Not being the idiots their leftist rulers take them for, Americans have been heading in the opposite direction in response to the collapse of law & order under Democrats:

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) announced on Wednesday that since 2020, more than 22 million Americans have purchased a firearm for the very first time. Sixteen million of those firearms have been purchased during Biden’s occupation of the Oval Office. …

Pew Research confirmed the fact that personal protection is far and away the most important reason gun owners have a firearm, far more than for hunting or sport shooting.

Pew also uncovered another important fact: Half of those not owning a firearm see themselves as purchasing one in the future.

That won’t happen if it is up to Democrats, who know their agenda cannot be imposed on a population able to defend itself.

In the meantime, even in liberal Connecticut:

A predominantly Black neighborhood in Hartford, Connecticut, hoping to fend off violent crime, has turned to an armed group of citizens to patrol their streets by land and by air.

The so-called “Self-Defense Brigade” — made up of about 40 legally armed citizens — are voluntarily patrolling the streets of Hartford’s North End wearing body cameras mostly on nights and weekends, according to the group’s founder, Cornell Lewis.

The volunteers also use drones and home surveillance cameras to defend public safety.

“The Democratic machine in Hartford is either unwilling or unable, incapable of doing it, and people are paying their tax dollars, and they’re not really getting any kind of service,” Lewis told Fox News. “So we want the people to understand, number one, self-defense is not a dirty word.”

Hartford’s Democratic Mayor Arunan Arulampalam has predictably denounced the group, bleating nauseatingly:

“Our community has seen so much pain and trauma, and what we need is for those who love this city to do the hard work of healing that pain, not walk around our streets with guns trying to take the law into their own hands.”

Just down I-91, New Haven’s Democratic Mayor Justin Elicker doesn’t like the Self-Defense Brigade either. He yelps:

“We need fewer guns on our street, not more.”

Simplistic bumper sticker slogans of that sort get traction in the muddled minds of Democrat voters, driven home by the partisan media.

Disarming potential victims does not make them safer. Yet Democrats may believe they can leverage crime to push through further restrictions on our right to defend ourselves. That may even be the point of causing the crime.

On tips from Chuck A, WDS 2.0, and Wiggins.