On Friday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions asked U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon and 45 other U.S. Attorneys appointed by Barack Obama to resign.
Fardon became Chicago’s “top federal prosecutor on Oct. 23, 2013,” and has been heavily criticized for his lack of prosecution of federal gun law violations.
Fardon played up “his office’s role in fighting gun violence on the streets of Chicago” but a Chicago Sun-Times report on “court records in October 2016 showed federal weapons charges in Chicago had actually fallen slightly over the previous five years.”
The Sun-Times report squares with the experience of the Chicago Police Board. During a January 7 interview with NPR, police board chairwoman Lori Lightfoot said Chicago needed more federal prosecutions if they were ever to turn the tide on the city’s gun crime.
We need to have more federal gun prosecutions in Chicago. Our federal partners from the U.S. attorney’s office, the ATF, the FBI need to be much more invested in this overall strategy. Chicago Police Department cannot tackle this issue by itself.
Sessions shifted the posture of the Department of Justice as soon as he was confirmed. He used a February 27 memo to direct the DOJ to “increase prosecutions of gun-law violations” so criminals know they will be doing time if they use guns for crime. And on March 8 he followed up by asking prosecutors to pursue “harsh sentences” for gun crimes and other violent offenses.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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