Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) is responding to the failure of gun control in Chicago by encouraging Illinois residents to urge Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) to institute more gun control.
Chicago has been the epicenter of gun violence in America for years, a gun control experiment gone wrong.
From 1982 to 2010 Chicago had a total ban on handgun ownership. The city’s murder rate skyrocketed under the ban–over 900 homicides per year were recorded in the early 1990s–proving criminals had guns whether the firearms were legal or not.
That ban is gone, but law-abiding citizens who wish to get a handgun for home defense have to acquire a state-issued Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card. That card allows an Illinois resident, including Chicago residents, to have buy a gun for self-defense but it does not allow them to carry the gun on the person. The law-abiding Chicago resident with a FOID card has to go through the requirements and pay the fees for a concealed carry permit in order to carry a gun on his person for self-defense.
It should be noted, that during this process the ability to get a firearm is made difficult by the fact that there are approximately five gun stores available for Chicago residents to acquire firearms. And those stores impose a 72-hour waiting period, as do gun stores throughout the rest of the state. Moreover, the city of Chicago has a “gun violence tax,” which raises the price on any gun and every single bullet purchased by law-abiding Chicago residents.
Throughout the years of bloodshed in gun-controlled Chicago, Rahm Emanuel has sought to fix the problem by adding even more gun laws and regulations.
For example, following the bloody Memorial Day Weekend of 2015, a weekend in which 12 individuals were shot and killed and 43 others were wounded, CBS Chicago quoted Emanuel calling for “community action” and “stronger gun laws.”
As the criminal use of guns raged in the spring of 2017 Emanuel called for more gun controls on federally licensed firearm dealers. Had this happened, the price for a gun would have necessarily increased again, making firearm ownership cost prohibitive for an even greater number of law-abiding residents.
In light of the gun crime currently plaguing Chicago, Emanuel is tweeting for city residents to urge Gov. Rauner to sign more gun control:
The NRA-ILA reports it is already illegal to knowingly sell a gun to anyone in Illinois who lacks “a currently valid Firearm Owner’s Identification Card” or “a currently valid license to carry a concealed firearm that has previously been issued in the transferee’s name by the Department of State Police under the Firearm Concealed Carry Act.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.