Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel loves to control Chicagoans, so he hates the truth about guns.
To address Chicago’s high crime rate, Emanuel debuted a plan before the City Council last week that is guaranteed to fail to prevent crimes committed with guns and succeed at rendering law-abiding citizens defenseless.
Emanuel proposes barring gun stores in 99.5% of the city and mandating that the few allowable gun stores undergo quarterly audits and install spy cams. He also blames other states for his state’s high crime rate.
In a testament to his enormous confidence in his plan, Emanuel did not allow immediate comments on his plan. Well, I am concerned young American woman and I have a few comments to share on Emanuel’s people-control scheme.
Truth #1: Stricter Gun Regulations Won’t Stop Crime
Emanuel blames other states with supposedly looser gun laws for the gun-related crime in his city. However, the tragic shooting committed by 22-year-old Elliot Rodger on May 23 near the University of California Santa Barbara proves Emanuel wrong.
California has the strictest gun regulations of all 50 states and maintains a central database that ostensibly allows police to track criminals via quick and easy access to all gun purchases. It turns out that shortly before Rodger packed his BWM with three semiautomatic firearms and went on a wild killing spree, his mother asked police to check in on her son at his apartment. His mother was concerned by the disturbing videos her son was posting online.
The police knocked on Rodger’s door and Rodger threw on the charm—pretending to be a polite and shy young man. The police fell for his act and never checked California’s database before or after they met Rodger. If they had, they would have learned that he had three firearms hidden in his room as well as a journal detailing his dreams to use guns to commit heinous mass violence.
Rodger’s aunt, Jenni Rodger, told SkyNews: “He was always a disturbed child.” Indeed, Rodger had aired his erratic behavior to the world by posting a series of videos on YouTube; by calling the police and accusing his roommate of stealing $20 worth of petty candles; by throwing a massive tantrum when he did not win the lottery; and by communicating his feelings of misery and extreme sexual insecurity to his parents.
It appears as though his family may have enabled his crime by allowing him to live alone and own guns despite his obvious mental instability; by providing him with a motor vehicle; and by failing to properly treat his depression and anger. Ultimately, California’s super strict guns laws failed to prevent Rodger’s raging violence.
Truth #2: Chicago’s problem is a not gun problem
“Chicago’s violence problem is largely a gun problem,” Emanuel claims. He is 100 % wrong. Guns are not running around shooting people. Guns are inanimate objects and tools of self-defense.
Another lesson from the UC Santa Barbara shooting is that mentally disturbed individuals like Rodger don’t need guns to commit crime. As Rodger chronologized in his journal, he first expressed his violent fantasies by throwing coffee and tea at a kissing couple outside of a Starbucks store and then by spraying orange juice at students playing kickball.
Before he used firearms to fatally shoot three victims, he used a knife to stab and kill his three roommates. He also used the BMW 3-series that his mother thoughtlessly gave him to get away from the police, wound additional pedestrians and ram a bicyclist before he shot himself.
As I prove in my new book, Let Me Be Clear, the Obama administration’s insatiable drive to control gun owners—while ignoring the fact that mentally ill individuals commit mass violence—is directly responsible for why five of the twelve largest mass shootings in American history have occurred under Obama’s watch.
Truth #3: We can’t trust government auditors and spies
Emanuel’s plan stipulates that gun stores install cameras “to record the point of sale.” What will additional cameras do? As mentioned above, mentally disturbed individuals like Rodger are notorious for conning their own parents as well as trained law enforcement officers into believing they are timid and harmless. Many gun stores already utilize security cameras. So, this feels like Emanuel’s attempt to add a meaningless bullet point to his list and feign to crack down on crime when he may as well be playing Candy Crush.
Emanuel’s plan would also subject gun stores to quarterly audits. Emanuel is misleading Chicagoans to believe that if they hand more power over to bureaucrats, they’ll be safer.
Well, guess what? Time after time bureaucrats fail to keep us safe and free. Their insatiable desire for power drives them to abuse their power and neglect their duty to defend American citizens and laws. These are a few of the government’s top “auditors:” Eric Holder (recall Fast & Furious and his habit of gunning down gun owners and journalists), Lois Lerner (the IRS’ #1 Girl Gone Wild), Hillary Clinton (recall Benghazi), and Barack Obama (recall the Veterans Affairs Scandal).
Emanuel governs by picking up blades of grass to see which way the Windy City blows. If he genuinely cares about keeping Chicago safe, Emanuel must reform his ways and govern based on the truth about guns.