The NRA has long pointed out that a disproportionate large number of gun murders has occurred in those jurisdictions having the most severe anti-gun laws.  Something like 25 percent of gun murders in America have occurred in gun-banning New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. for decades.  Yet, the population of these cities amount to less than five percent of our nation's population.

Severe anti-gun laws including gun bans are usually passed in jurisdictions like these that already have a high rate of violence.  Does the 1982 Chicago handgun ban ring a bell?  Unfortunately, the problem with most of these gun control proposals is that they criminalize much of the citizenry but have only marginal effects on career criminals.

Mayor Daley's reputation has taken a beating for several years due to the number of corruption charges leveled against his Bridgeport friends and city workers. The Bridgeport-dominated Hired Truck Program scandal has been going on since Daley's father was Mayor (Chicago Tribune, 2/13/05).  Chicago taxpayers are now faced with higher taxes to pay for the massive fraud and corruption that these people have bilked out of Chicago's government.

As a hands on Mayor, "I don't know" is sounding a little weak as an excuse for all the newspapers exposes of fraud and corruption which seem to get worse daily.  Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. was correct in saying "The buck stops on the fifth floor at City hall."

Due to all these scandals and the growing tax burden Chicago is becoming increasingly irrelevant to transportation which was what the city was built on.  The trains, planes and ships that used to carry cargo, people and jobs to and through Chicago are now avoiding the city in increasing numbers.  Business's and people continue to vote with their feet and pocketbooks, bypassing Chicago altogether.

It seems that Mayor Daley is up to his old tricks by having his Chicago flunkies in the legislature introduce the same old tired Chicago style gun control instead of crime control to divert attention from all the fraud and corruption going on in his administration.  Daley's gun control hasn't worked in Chicago, why should it work anywhere else?

By the way, where has Daley's old buddy Chicago area States Attorney Richard Devine been through all these scandals.  This vocal opponent of our Second Amendment Right under the Bill of Rights in the Constitution has been remarkably quiet during these scandals.  I sometimes wonder if he has even read the Constitution.  He will probably say he doesn't want to interfere with an ongoing federal investigation.  If he had done his job in the first place it wouldn't have been necessary for the feds to come in and do it for him.  However, he always seems to find time to follow Daley to the State House in Springfield to infringe upon our Second Amendment Right and champion anti-self-defense gun laws.

The Chicago area tends to have the most restrictive gun-control regulations in the state, and have fought the hardest against the option of law-abiding citizens having the right to legally carry a concealed handgun to protect themselves and their families.  Yet urban areas like Chicago are the very places that benefit the most from non-discretionary concealed handgun laws.  Reductions in crime rates by issuing non-discretionary concealed-handgun laws are greatest precisely in those urban areas that have the highest crime rates, largest and most dense population, and having mass concentrations of minorities.  This shouldn't be too surprising since law-abiding citizens in these areas must fend for themselves to a great extent for protection.

One of Daley's goals this session will be to ban semiautomatic sporting rifles by misrepresenting them as machine guns by calling them "assault weapons".  These are not machine guns, and are rarely used in crimes.  Less than one percent.  Nationally, murders with knives, clubs and axes outnumber murders with so-called "assault weapons" by 20-1.

These semiautomatic sporting rifles were not a problem before the National Ban in 1994 or since the ban ended in 2004.  The 1994 Ban was only a ploy by politicians wanting to show the public that they were doing something about the high crime rate at the time.  Daley is trying to do the same thing at this time to cover up the high crime and murder rate in Chicago that he hasn't been able to control, and to take the public heat off his scandal ridden administration.

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