In what’s become a sad weekly occurrence, 70 people were shot in Chicago this weekend, 10 of those fatally, as the city’s homicide tally for the year crept over the 400 mark. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is playing politics with the issue and calling for more gun control even though the city has some of the strictest gun-control laws in the country.
During the previous weekend, 64 were shot, 13 fatally, including one teenager. Over the Fourth of July weekend, 87 were shot, with 17 fatalities.
On Monday, Lightfoot dismissed President Trump’s offers of federal assistance, claiming that federal help has backfired in Portland.
“I have great concerns about that, particularly given the track record in the city of Portland,” Lightfoot said today. “I spent a lot of time yesterday talking with the mayor of Portland to get a sense of what’s happened there. We don’t need federal agents without any insignia taking taking people off the streets and holding them, I think, unlawfully. That’s not what we need.”
For the record, the City of Portland also did not ask for federal assistance in dealing with their out-of-control riot problem, and has in fact asked the feds to leave the city. The federal assistance in Portland is limited to the area around the federal courthouse in the city, which the Portland police and Mayor Ted Wheeler allowed to be attacked and graffitied repeatedly.
Lightfoot may not want federal assistance in the Windy City, but many in the Chicago Police Department do. John Catanzara Jr., the president of Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 7, has written to President Trump to apprise him of the situation in the city and to beg for the federal assistance that the mayor refuses to consider.
“Mayor Lightfoot has proved to be a complete failure who is either unwilling or unable to maintain law and order here,” Cantanzara wrote. “These politicians are failing the good men and women of this city and the police department.”
Lightfoot’s office dismissed Catanzara’s concerns as a “political stunt.”
Instead, Lightfoot’s efforts to curb the out-of-control violence in her city center on that old leftist canard — gun control. Last Wednesday, Lightfoot addressed the president’s offer to assist the city with more anti-gun rhetoric.
“If the president was really committed to helping us deal with our violence, he would do some easy things. What he would push for is 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,” Lightfoot said.
But the mayor fails to concede that Chicago already has some of the strictest gun-control laws in the nation. Chicago residents (and all Illinois residents) must already apply for and obtain a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) prior to purchasing a firearm. Obtaining this card already amounts to the “universal background check” that Lightfoot is complaining about. Moreover, Cook County — where Chicago is located — has already banned so-called assault weapons.
Those strictures have clearly not produced the desired result in Chicago. They’ve only made the city a prime target for those who would sell such weapons illegally. They’ve also made it harder to trace the weapons used in these crimes, and they’ve made the streets more dangerous for the ordinary citizen of Chicago.
When Lightfoot isn’t whining about even more anti-Second Amendment laws, she’s engaging in juvenile Twitter feuds. Last week when White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany called out Lightfoot for being “derelict” in her duties and suggested that the Chicago mayor swallow her pride and accept the president’s offer of assistance, Lightfoot responded, “Hey, Karen. Watch your mouth.”
The term “Karen” is a pejorative used to describe an officious, middle-aged white woman who butts in and tells others what do unsolicited. You can believe that the term describes McEnany or not, but for an elected official to use the term is questionable to say the least. Like her vulgar rant against alderman Raymond Lopez in June, Lightfoot’s juvenile taunt to McEnany proves that her skin is too thin for the position she holds.
In the end, federal assistance is not the answer for cities such as Chicago. Federal officers or the National Guard may help calm some of the violence in the short term, but as soon as they leave, the same left-wing politicians will be in charge of the city and the murders will begin anew. For any meaningful change to occur in Chicago, the people must reject the same tired rhetoric and vote out people such as Lori Lightfoot. Absent some form of recall of Lightfoot — which Illinois law does not currently allow — for Chicago, their next chance to choose someone better won’t be until 2023.
Photo: AP Images
James Murphy is a freelance journalist who writes on a variety of subjects. He can be reached at [email protected].
