Chicago Mayor Pushes Gun-Control Policies To Fix Crime, Even Though They Already Exist in Her City
Under the leadership of Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Chicago has seen a surge in murder and violent crime of late.
WMAQ-TV reported that in June, shootings in the city were up by 75 percent and murders by 78 percent compared with the same period last year. Victims have included children.
The crime wave prompted a letter from President Donald Trump to Lightfoot and Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker on June 26.
“Your lack of leadership on this important issue continues to fail the people you have sworn to protect. … If you are willing to put partisanship aside, we can revitalize distressed neighborhoods in Chicago, together. But to succeed, you must establish law and order,” Trump wrote.
The bloodshed has continued this month, testing the president’s patience.
“How about Chicago?” he said during a news conference Monday. “Would you say they need help after this weekend? Do you know the numbers? Did you hear the numbers? Many, many shot. Many, many killed. I’m not talking about one, two. Was it 18 people killed? I think more than that. And you add it up over the summer — this is worse than Afghanistan, by far. This is worse than anything anyone has ever seen.”
In a letter to Trump on Saturday, John Catanzara, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police’s Lodge 7 in Chicago, asked for federal help. He called Lightfoot a “complete failure” who is not able to maintain law and order.
The mayor, however, has made it clear she accepts no blame for the violence in her city, instead pointing her finger at Trump.
“He likes to use us as a political punching bag, but if the president was really committed to helping us deal with our violence, he would do some easy things,” Lightfoot told Andrea Mitchell in an MSNBC interview on Tuesday. “One is, he would push for universal background checks. He would push for an assault weapons ban. He would push to make sure that people who are banned from getting on airplanes can’t get guns.
“This is the kind of thing that federal leadership could do, but as long as we are challenged with having states surrounding us, notably Indiana, that has very lax gun laws where somebody can drive across the border and literally load up a vehicle with military-grade weapons and bring them back to the city of Chicago, we’re going to continue to be challenged.
“We’re doing an all-hands-on-deck strategy. We’re really focusing on the root causes of the violence. But fundamentally we have too many illegal guns on our street, and that is a direct result of a failure of federal leadership, which is why we need change in November and we need the kind of leadership that Joe Biden’s going to bring to our country.”
Apparently, that all-hands-on-deck strategy in Chicago includes releasing hundreds of inmates from jails while hiding their identities from the police.
The mayor’s strategy also includes telling an alderman on a recorded conference call “I think you’re 100% full of s—, is what I think,” when he pleaded for help to protect his community from rioters.
Democrats are basically a broken record when it comes to gun control, and the loop never stops, even when they get the policies they want. Cook County, where Chicago is located, has had a ban on so-called assault weapons since 2007, and it’s unlikely that many of the recent shootings were done with what Lightfoot called “military-grade weapons.”
Further, the state of Illinois requires all licensed dealers to conduct background checks upon purchase, and unlicensed sellers are required to ask for a buyer’s Firearm Owner’s Identification Card (which requires, you guessed it, a background check to obtain).
The only policy that doesn’t apply is the “no-fly list” ban, but how would that fix anything, considering that Lightfoot claims most of these guns are owned illegally anyway?
The mayor also had the audacity to blame Republican-led Indiana, which protects Second Amendment rights, for her city’s problems.
This is not the first time Lightfoot has said the neighboring state is responsible for Chicago’s violence.
“60% of illegal firearms recovered in Chicago come from outside IL — mostly from states dominated by coward Republicans like you who refuse to enact commonsense gun legislation. Keep our name out of your mouth,” she tweeted last September in response to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
As one commenter replied at the time, “This response doesn’t make sense to me. Even if the guns come from outside Chicago, the ppl who illegally use them CHOSE to GO get them from outside. Criminals will obtain weapons anyway they can. Stats on where they come from doesn’t negate they ARE being sought/illegally used.”
This response doesn’t make sense to me. Even if the guns come from outside Chicago, the ppl who illegally use them CHOSE to GO get them from outside. Criminals will obtain weapons anyway they can. Stats on where they come from doesn’t negate they ARE being sought/illegally used
— Eagle Flight (@EagleFlight9) September 3, 2019
Donald Trump and the federal government are not to blame for the crime in Chicago, and Lightfoot and other local officials need to take responsibility for their failure to clean up the city.
Chicago and other Democrat-controlled cities have horrific violence because they have enacted policies that lead to surges in crime and make it difficult for police to protect residents.
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