CCRKBA’s Alan Gottlieb
By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
After the Chicago Tribune and other news agencies reported that the Windy City had racked up 1,000 shooting by mid-April, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms called on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to resign.
Blaming Emanuel’s anti-gun policies and philosophy for keeping honest citizens essentially disarmed while “violent thugs and drug gangs who prey on the public…have turned the city into a slaughterhouse,” CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb said it is time for the anti-gun mayor to step down. Emanuel served in the Bill Clinton administration and was linked to the former president’s gun control agenda.
“His gun control and crime reduction policies have hurt the most vulnerable citizens in Chicago,” Gottlieb asserted. “Under Emanuel’s leadership, the city has never really complied with the spirit of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago. His restrictive policies have prevented gun stores, where people could obtain the tools to defend themselves and their families. His administration has resisted shooting ranges where citizens could get training and practice. Six years after McDonald, there are still no gun stores or ranges inside the city limits.”
Troubles in the city have been compounded by protests from the minority community over police shootings and other police interactions with minorities. According to the Chicago Tribune, Emanuel has ordered the police department to act on a list of recommended changes that include meetings in minority communities and creating new discipline guidelines.
But with more than 170 homicides in Chicago by mid-April, Gottlieb said Emanuel “has allowed his city to descend toward anarchy” while “his administration has worked aggressively to keep the public disarmed and vulnerable.”
In 2015, Chicago logged 465 slayings, up from the 411 reported in 2014. It amounted to a 13.1 percent increase, according to the Baltimore Sun. The newspaper acknowledged that the per capita homicide rate in Chicago was far lower than in Baltimore, where there were 344 murders in 2015, with a rate of 55.2 homicides per 100,000 residents. Chicago’s murder rate was 17 per 100,000 residents. Chicago has a much larger population.
Still, that many murders put Chicago on a rising pattern that continues this year. The Chicago Tribune reported that over the past few years, the city did not record 1,000 shootings until the month of June. Last year, the mark was reached on June 4, and in 2014, the date was June 15. This year’s count is several weeks ahead of schedule, and officials are alarmed.
Gottlieb accused Emanuel of allowing the city “to descend toward anarchy.” At the same time, the city has continued to discourage the opening of gun stores or shooting ranges inside city limits, which is not in keeping with the spirit of the McDonald ruling, he asserted.
“When an elected official consistently fails to lead,” Gottlieb said, “when his policies result in more suffering for the citizens he is supposed to represent, and when his strategies have proven to be one huge demonstrable failure, then it is time for him to step down.”
