Mayor Lori Lightfoot Seeks Federal Gun Control as Chicago Shootings Surge

Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) pushed for more federal gun control Tuesday as Chicago gun violence surges and firearm-related homicides continue to increase.

Breitbart News reported eight people were shot inside a residence Tuesday, leaving four dead and four wounded while 43 people were shot over the weekend in Chicago and 55 were shot the previous weekend in the city.

ABC News indicates Mayor Lightfoot responded to the violence by appealing to the federal government for more gun control.

Lightfoot specifically addressed Tuesday’s shooting of eight people in a residence, saying, “What we will likely learn as the details become clearer is that illegal guns continue to plague us. Gun violence continues to have a deep and painful history in our city. Unfortunately, Chicago is not unique. We are part of a club of cities for which no one wants to belong, cities with mass shootings.”

She added, “Cities individually cannot tackle this problem. We just cannot. In Chicago, we’ve done absolutely everything possible and we need help from the federal government. When guns are so porous that they can come across our borders as we see every single day in Chicago, we know that we have to have a multi-jurisdictional, national solution to this horrible plague of gun violence.”

Lightfoot asked for federal help and said, “This is a national problem,” returning to a refrain she has repeated many times before in addressing the problem afflicting her increasingly violent city:

Mayor Lori Lightfoot / Periscope

In the summer of 2020 Lightfoot responded to heightened violence in the city by calling for more gun control. She did not mention the Chicago-area already has an “assault weapons” ban, thanks to a Cook County prohibition.

Moreover, Chicago and the entire state of Illinois already have a licensing process for would-be gun owners that includes a background check.

Additionally, Chicago and all of Illinois have a 72-hour waiting period on gun purchases and a red flag law, among other gun controls.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News 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 at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.