It’s totally understandable that Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is touchy about gun violence in her city. The city is a shooting gallery with citizens little more than clay pigeons.
Last weekend was a typical holiday weekend in Chicago: 7 dead, 41 shot. Lightfoot’s answer to the violence? More gun control, of course.
Senator Ted Cruz tweeted a response to that idea:
Gun control doesn’t work. Look at Chicago. Disarming law-abiding citizens isn’t the answer. Stopping violent criminals—prosecuting & getting them off the street—BEFORE they commit more violent crimes is the most effective way to reduce murder rates. Let’s protect our citizens. https://t.co/znHO31gDH2
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 2, 2019
The comment struck a nerve with Lightfoot — not just because Cruz is right, but because of who he is: a pro-gun, Republican conservative.
Lightfoot lost it.
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. https://t.co/yVM4JHL3xy pic.twitter.com/pr613A3dpf
— Lori Lightfoot (@LightfootForChi) September 3, 2019
“Keep our name out of your mouth”? Cruz didn’t tweet anything revolutionary. All he did was point out the obvious: gun laws don’t affect the ease with which criminals can get their hands on a weapon. All the gun control measures in the world — any and all laws ever proposed by any anti-gun hysteric — will not lower Chicago’s murder rate. Putting violent offenders behind bars will.
Lightfoot’s incoherent rant contradicted the words of her own police chief:
“We know who a lot of these people are. And how do we know that? Because we keep arresting them over and over and over and over and over again,” Mr. Johnson said after a weekend in which 52 people were shot. “It’s just a vicious cycle. So until we hold violent offenders accountable in the way that they should be, we’re going to continue to see this.”
Ms. Lightfoot, however, blamed “coward Republicans” from out of state for not enacting Chicago-style gun laws.
It’s quite unseemly for a politician to act like a two-year-old and throw a tantrum like this. Besides, what in the wide, wide, world of sports does where the guns come from have to do with anything? Lightfoot is desperate to deflect blame from city politicians, whose only response to the escalating violence is more gun control. They, like their national counterparts in the gun control lobby, are totally bereft of new ideas. They are a broken record, repeating the same mantra over and over.
Meanwhile, the body counts grow.
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