Chicago – -(AmmoLand.com)- The murder of Officer Ella French of the Chicago Police Department is a tragedy. One that Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago, has chosen to lay at the feet of those who support the Second Amendment.
She went so far as to say that guns “bring violence.” Well, it’s utter bullshit. I’ve never seen a firearm, be it an AR-15 or a .22 like the Remington 597 or even a Glock 17 do anything on its own. Each of those firearms, and any other I have seen, has required a person to decide to pull the trigger and where to aim them.
But Lightfoot’s bullshit isn’t just an attack on guns and the Second Amendment, it’s also a clear attempt to avoid blame. Like the Mexican government, she has been unable or unwilling to address violent crime seriously, and she wants a scapegoat. Which the Second Amendment – that’s what she means when she attacks guns – is supposed to be.
The thing is, as has been noted here before, there is an answer that can greatly reduce the violence that too many of our fellow Americans in Chicago – and other urban areas – are dealing with. It’s Project Exile, which uses existing provisions of 18 USC 922 and 18 USC 924 to put those who misuse firearms away for a long time.
Put it this way, the scum who ambushed Officer French and her partner were probably the type of people that a restored version of the armed career criminal provisions could have put away for 15 years – minimum. The fact of the matter is that should some of the Second Amendment cases working their way through the courts go our way – cases like those which have stricken bans on standard-capacity magazines and modern multi-purpose semi-automatic firearms – Second Amendment supporters will need to have an alternative ready to the answers we will get from the likes of Bloomberg, Schumer, and the Biden-Harris regime.
They will be seeking to either pack the courts, they will seek to attack our rights via the National Firearms Act or some licensing/registration scheme, they will turn to financial blacklisting (like Operation Chokepoint), or they will try to repeal the Second Amendment. Second Amendment supporters cannot rule out that all of those approaches will be used.
The fact is, using laws on the books to put away bad guys who misuse firearms has worked before. Second Amendment supporters should contact their Representatives and Senators to politely urge support for legislation like the Prosecuting Gun Crimes Saves Lives Act and the Protecting Communities and Preserving the Second Amendment Act. They also need to contact Mayor Lightfoot’s office, and register their displeasure in a firm, but civil, manner. It will also be important to defeat anti-Second Amendment extremists via the ballot box at the federal, state, and local levels.
About Harold Hutchison
Writer Harold Hutchison has more than a dozen years of experience covering military affairs, international events, U.S. politics and Second Amendment issues. Harold was consulting senior editor at Soldier of Fortune magazine and is the author of the novel Strike Group Reagan. He has also written for the Daily Caller, National Review, Patriot Post, Strategypage.com, and other national websites.