Authorities haven’t said what kind of firearm was used in a drive-by shooting in Chicago’s Garfield Park on Halloween night that resulted in 14 people, including three children, being injured, but that’s not stopping Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot from demanding a gun control response to the shooting.
Lightfoot posted a statement on Twitter just a few hours after the shooting was reported declaring herself “heartbroken” over the shooting and calling on Illinois lawmakers to ban “weapons of war” in response.
— Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot (@chicagosmayor) November 1, 2022
“Weapons of war” is Democratic code for “semi-automatic rifle,” and this isn’t the first time we’ve seen lefties rush to associate a horrific crime with AR-15s even when there’s no evidence to suggest that’s what type of firearm a suspect used in their attack. In fact Joe Biden himself pulled the same stunt in his first remarks after a 15-year old in North Carolina opened fire on innocent victims in a quiet Raleigh neighborhood a few weeks ago. In his statement, Biden declared that the incident proved we “must pass an assault weapons ban,” though police at the time had not yet said what kind of gun was used. Days later law enforcement revealed that the 15-year old was in possession of a shotgun and a handgun during the attack, not a rifle, but by that point Biden’s false narrative had already been pushed out by dozens of media outlets.
Lightfoot is now following Biden’s lead and blaming Monday night’s shooting on a supposed “weapon of war” instead of the individuals who wantonly pulled the trigger of whatever gun they were using on group of people who had gathered for a vigil for a woman who recently passed away. Police have indicated that they believe there were at least two individuals firing from the vehicle, described as a dark SUV, but have said nothing about the guns that the attackers used.
CPD Superintendent David Brown shared his concerns after the shooting.
“We always worry about retaliation obviously, but we don’t know enough about this, whether it involved a gang conflict or some personal conflict yet, but as soon as we know we’ll share that with the public,” Brown said. “And obviously we’re deploying extra police resources in the area to make sure that we can prevent any retaliation if that’s something that’s real.”
Brown said the shooting was over in a matter of seconds. It was captured on POD video, which police are reviewing.
There is no known motive for the shooting at this time, and Brown said there were no known conflicts at the corner Monday night. Police are waiting for victims to finish being treated so they can interview them.
The mayor did get a couple of things correct in her statement; first, the people responsible for this shooting are indeed cowards. But she’s also right when she declared that those who pulled the trigger had no concerns for the lives of their victims. My question is why on earth would she believe that someone who has no compunction about firing into a crowd of people would be dissuaded by a gun ban? Odds are these trigger-pullers aren’t legal gun owners, and my guess is one or more of them will have had repeated contacts with the criminal justice system. Why would they care about breaking a gun control law when they’re indifferent about taking the life of a child? Besides, Chicago has already conducted their decades-long experiment in banning guns in the name of safety, and the most murderous year in Cook County’s history falls squarely in the middle of the time period when Chicago had banned the ownership and possession of handguns; weapons which are used far more frequently in crimes than rifles of any kind.
Still, Lightfoot isn’t the only Illinois politician calling for a gun ban these days. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has also expressed support for a semi-auto ban, and it’s expected to be a major priority for anti-gun politicians in the state legislature next year. With the state’s SAFE-T Act’s repeal of cash bail set to take effect in January Democrats are going to need a handy scapegoat when violent crime rates start soaring, and scary black rifles (and the people who own them) will be their go-to “do something” answer to the mess of their own making.
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