Chicago has become something of a joke among the gun rights crowd. After all, if gun control worked, Chicago would likely be a Utopia. People would gather in the streets and spontaneously break into song and dance like they were in a Broadway musical or something. It would be absolute Heaven on Earth.

That’s not what happens in Chicago, though. Chicago is a rough, violent city that is held up as a hallmark of anti-gun policy failures.

It seems the mayor of Chicago is a bit delusional about why that’s the case, though.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot rejects claims gun control has failed her city and instead blames states without as many gun laws.

In an interview posted by New This News only days removed from a weekend in which 41 were shot, nine fatally, in Chicago, Lightfoot blamed Chicago’s gun crime on Indiana. She described Indiana’s laws as too lax, and suggested the laws allow criminals to travel out of state, acquire guns, then return and use those guns criminally on the streets of Chicago.

Lightfoot then suggested more federal gun control is the central solution for Chicago gun crime, that universal background checks must be enacted from the top down.

Unfortunately for Lightfoot, she’s wrong.

You see, federal law says you can buy a gun across state lines so long as everything is in accordance with your home state. In other words, if California bans AR-15s, you can’t go to Nevada and buy one. Not legally, anyway. [Edited to add: I was reminded that you can’t buy a handgun at all without it shipping to an FFL, which I didn’t even think about. That’s my bad. However, it just further invalidates Lightfoot’s nonsense.]

In other words, people can’t cross the line to Indiana and buy guns to take to Chicago because of lax gun laws.

Lightfoot is parroting an old chestnut among the anti-gun Left, one that blames all the city’s problems on someone else. However, she doesn’t understand that federal law holds Indiana gun dealers to Illinois laws for Illinois residents.

Besides, we already know that the criminals get their guns through illegal means. We have a Department of Justice study that shows this. We also have the criminals’ own words on how they get their guns. They’re not driving to Indiana to buy them legally.

Frankly, the idea that they are is delusional. Why go through all that, create a paper trail that could theoretically be followed, only to use the gun in a crime and land themselves in hot water? It wouldn’t take long before crooks realized that this was probably not a winning strategy. They may be bad guys, but that doesn’t mean they’re stupid.

What Lightfoot is doing is following in the footsteps of her predecessors who prefer to kick the blame onto another state, one where they have no pull but who also provides no votes for them. By blaming Indiana for Chicago’s woes, she can pretend she’s powerless to stop the mayhem in the Windy City, despite much of that stemming from a combination of factors she probably could do something about. Yes, that includes Illinois gun control laws.

She doesn’t want to do that, though, since the city has gone all-in on gun control through the years and backing off on that would be to admit defeat.

And honestly, why would she care if a few dozen people die every weekend in her city? They’re not her personally, right? It’s far more important to save face than to save lives.