Blue State Mayor Bolts From Bloomberg's Anti-Gun Crusade

An Illinois city mayor has decided to quit Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun campaign.  Mayor Larry Morrissey of Rockford, Illinois’ third largest city, said that he could no longer be a member of an organization that goes after legal guns and the rights of gun owners.  Of course, he’s talking about Mayors Against Illegal Guns.  Warner Todd Huston at Breitbart wrote on June 23 that:

[A]t a townhall-styled appearance on June 22 in nearby Loves Park, Illinois, Rockford Mayor Larry Morrissey announced that he has, indeed, quit Mayor Bloomberg’s gun group because Bloomberg’s group was not fulfilling what Morrissey felt was the group’s stated intentions.

Morrissey has for some time been saying he intended to quit the anti-gun group and some citizens wondered if this was just electioneering, but at this most recent townhall event, Mayor Morrissey has for the first time said definitively that he is out.

In the video shot by local political blogger Ulysses Arn, Mayor Morrissey said the chief reason he left Bloomberg’s group is because he thought the group would be against illegal guns but has instead become a group looking for ways to ban legal guns and attack the rights of legal gun owners. He also said that he intends to get a concealed carry license himself when they become available in Illinois.

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Rockford is the third largest city in Illinois with a population of 180,569, a median age of 30-years, and a 39 percent minority population.

Unfortunately, Rockford also has some of the highest crime in Illinois and was featured as the 19th most dangerous cities in the country in a 2011 Forbes article.

Morrissey noted that most of the gun violence in Rockford is committed with handguns, which Mayors Against Illegal Guns have mostly ignored. So far, the group is focused on getting so-called “assault weapons” banned, despite the fact that less than 3% of all murders are committed by any type of rifle.  At the same time, Morrissey aptly noted that the police cannot be everywhere all the time – and that every American should have the right to carry a firearm.