Posted on by Californiacontrarian

Lightfoot . . . But Not Gordon Lightfoot

Another Labor Day Weekend has come and gone.

From Townhall:

While most of the media attention this Labor Day weekend focused on the mass shooting in Odessa and Midland, Texas, where seven people were killed and 22 injured, the death toll in Chicago was the same with 36 people shot. The weekend proved to be more violent than the same time last year when four people were killed over Labor Day weekend and 23 people injured. BTW, all of the weekends in July also had near record-setting numbers of dead and wounded.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) took notice, tweeting that “gun control doesn’t work, etc.” Sen. Cruz should keep his mouth shut when mayhem and murder are involved. He has no reason to state the obvious in this situation. Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot took issue with Cruz’s assessment, and lashed out, telling him to “Keep our name out of your mouth. 60% of illegal firearms recovered in Chicago come from outside Illinois – mostly from states dominated by coward Republicans like you who refuse to enact commonsense gun legislation.”

She is right about the numbers, as only 40.4% of the recovered firearms come from Illinois. The rest come from a potpourri of states, from as far away as Texas (1.8%) and Georgia (2.4%). The majority of the out of state guns (21%) come from neighboring Indiana, the northwest corner of which abuts Chicago’s South side, and surely Mayor Lori Lightfoot must know that most likely the guns are brought across the state border by Chicago thugs.

However Mayor Lightfoot should learn not to lash out, when the problem is not solely a matter of where the weapons are coming from. Granted, she is in a bad position, having inherited the city’s violent state of chaos from her predecessor, Rahm Emanuel who served as the 55th mayor of Chicago from 2011 to 2019. Emanuel tried his best to emasculate Chicago’s Police Force by bringing in Garry McCarthy from Newark to take over the Chicago Police Department in early 2011. McCarthy came in and cleaned house by reflexively demoting most of the police captains, which caused a large number of experienced police officers to retire. These actions of Emanuel and his hired gun, McCarthy, severely damaged the morale of the department, a blow from which it has not yet recovered. The remedy here falls directly on Mayor Lightfoot. Hopefully, she recognizes the severity of the morale problem, and realizes that only she can reverse it.

The other major issue that Emanuel dropped on Lightfoot is the sanctuary city issue. Emanuel was a big proponent of sanctuary cities, and Chicago was made a sanctuary city in 2012 when Mayor Emanuel and the City Council passed the Welcoming City Ordinance. This ordinance meant that the police could not ask about one’s immigration status or disclose that information to authorities, and that the City will not deny city services based on one’s immigration status. Considering that most of the violence on the South and West sides of the city is gang and drug related, and a considerable portion of this is related to criminal illegals, the making of Chicago a Sanctuary City seems almost counter-intuitive! Again with this issue, the remedy will fall directly onto Lightfoot, and whether or not she will have the balls to reverse this sanctuary city designation. 

The other problem which Mayor Lightfoot did not address or even mention has to do with the often light sentencing of gun offenders.  As Dana Loesch recently pointed out, “Classic example of ridiculous sentencing in Chicago allowing repeat offenders to drive gun homicide: Felon fires off gun in public, and prosecutors let him plead guilty to a reduced charge of unlawful use of a weapon & drop two counts of felony possession.”

So unless things are changed it will be “Sundown” and like “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” for Lightfoot and Chicago!

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