By Teri O'Brien -
Rahm Emanuel is well-known for the sentence "never let a crisis go to waste," which is one of the few utterances from the Chicago mayor that we can repeat her on this family site without redaction. That statement is a refreshing, and stunningly honest, description of a key item in the leftist playbook. It is an admission, albeit an inadvertent one, that no rational person would willingly agree to the Left's agenda, that is, unless he was acting out of fear, panic or the other emotions that demagogues use as levers against free people.
When I saw Rahm's latest lame excuse for the Memorial Day, 2015 gun violence in his city, one in a series of endless recitations of threadbare liberal clichés, I thought of another sentence, one from by Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in the 1927 case, Buck v. Bell. "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." He wants more gun control laws. At an event honoring police officers, he stated “It is not just about how many police you have, it is about the quantity of guns that are on the street so we actually have gun laws that back up the men and women we just recognized." Guns on the street? How could this be?
When Chicago banned handgun ownership, people were listening to music on something called a Sony Walkman (ask your mom), your phone was wired to the wall in your dwelling, and people smoked on airplanes (and virtually everywhere else.) It was April 9, 1982, and this victory for anti-Second Amendment forces was the result of a 17-year democrat war in Illinois on the freedom of law-abiding gun owners. First Mayor Richard J. Daley, then his son, Richard M. Daley, and now, Rahm Emanuel continues is this proud tradition.
In this effort, Rahm's "crisis" strategy was a huge part of the gun grabbers' playbook. Beginning with the 1963 assassination of President John Kennedy, by communist sympathizer Lee Harvey Oswald, gun control advocates seized on every high-profile violent event to try to justify their plans. The 1960's offered ample opportunities for them, including the Soviet-funded anti-Vietnam protests, assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the riots following these tragedies.
One unfortunate bit of fallout from that 1982 gun ban was the explosion of violence in downstate Illinois and the collar county suburbs. Once all gun violence had been eliminated within the City of Chicago, all the gun-toting criminals, thugs and lunatics skedaddled out of there STAT!
Not really! Gun violence in Chicago continued, prompting headlines like this one from 2009 from Northwestern's Medill Journalism News, "How can a city that bans handguns lead the nation in murders?" There's a real head scratcher, huh? In the story, self-hating white guy/radical goofball priest, Fr. Michael Pfleger describes going to high schools and having 75% of the students raise their hands when he asks if they know where to obtain handguns.
Like all liberals, Rahm Emanuel's mind is closed to reality. He is a prisoner of his ideology, and therefore, impervious to facts, logic or reason on the issue of gun ownership. At least for the peasants in the city he runs. As for him, he'll take another helping of that 24/7 armed security, thank you very much, and new "gun" (actually law-abiding citizen) control laws. Here's a thought. Enforce the EXISTING laws, Mr. Mayor. In a 2012 appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," NRA Exec. Director Wayne LaPierre schooledWashington D.C. gun law scofflaw/host David Gregory, telling him that, according to a Syracuse University study, Chicago ranked 90th out of 90 jurisdictions in enforcing federal gun laws.
One other incidental point worth noting: Hello, Mr. Mayor? The 1982 gun ban was declared unconstitutional in 2010. Damn! Once again, that pesky Constitution interferes with a liberal's brilliant do-gooding plans!
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