BELLEVUE, WA – After another violent weekend in Chicago, during which nearly two dozen people were shot in a single 12-hour period, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) suggested that Mayor Richard Daley has been spending too much time fiddling with the rights of law-abiding Illinois gun owners while the city around him is falling apart.
“Mayor Daley could give Emperor Nero some lessons in how to mismanage his responsibilities,” said SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb. “Here’s a guy who should have, and could have, provided true leadership to prevent these kinds of outbreaks, but instead, he’s spent far too much of his time trying to interfere with the gun rights of honest citizens. On the one hand, he touts Chicago’s tough gun laws and wants to make them a model for the state, yet he hasn’t stopped gun crime in his jurisdiction, on his watch. What’s wrong with that picture?
“As in the legend of Nero, who played a fiddle while ancient Rome burned,” he continued, “Mayor Daley has his priorities wrong. He has tirelessly lobbied the Legislature to create increasingly onerous gun laws. Instead of focusing his energy where it will do the most good – in Chicago’s violent neighborhoods – he’s been pushing proposals that would restrict the rights of gun owners in places like Springfield and Winchester and Vandalia.
“The mayor has a vision problem,” Gottlieb observed. “Show him a criminal, and all he sees is a bad gun. Show him a Southern Illinois goose hunter and he sees a South Side street thug. Show him a recreational shooter, and he sees a terrorist. For him, guns are too menacing, too big or too small. No gun is a good gun, no restriction is a bad law. His political myopia is as out of step with the times as it would be for him to parade around the city wearing a toga.
“Like the emperor who had no clothes,” Gottlieb stated, “the mayor’s anti-gun philosophy has no common sense. All Daley has done is push legislation that would criminalize honest Illinois residents, instead of putting criminals where they belong. He would disarm law-abiding citizens and create what amounts to a risk-free working environment for violent outlaws.”