During an August 12, 2020, appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) suggested Joe Biden is key to securing more gun control for Chicago and the rest of the country.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski played a clip of President Trump offering federal help to Chicago, wherein Trump said:
Together, the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois have 25,000 police officers, sheriffs, and guardsmen, available to quell any violence. They can do it very quickly, very easily, if allowed to do their jobs. All available federal support requested to stop the violence, and arrest the criminals, we have to be asked by the governors or the mayors and we’ll be there very rapidly.
Mayor Lightfoot responded, “Those are the words of somebody who doesn’t understand the first thing about local policing.”
She then pivoted to push for more gun control, suggesting the federal government needs to “pass common-sense gun reform, make sure that everybody has background checks, stop the availability of ‘assault weapons,’ people that are on a no-fly list shouldn’t be able to get weapons, the list goes on and on.”
Lightfoot stressed her belief that the election of Joe Biden to the White House is key to securing these and other controls for Chicago and the rest of the country. She said, “I need a leader in Washington, DC, who is willing to take on the gun lobby and do what’s right for our children and our cities. That is not President Trump, we need Joe Biden.”
Lightfoot did not mention that background checks for retail gun sales have been in place across the country since 1998. Those checks–National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) checks–are performed by the FBI on every person who tries to buy at gun at retail.
Moreover, the state of Illinois requires would-be gun purchasers to first acquire a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card, and the process for obtaining that card requires a background check. That represents a de facto universal background check system within the state of Illinois.
The state also has a 72-hour waiting period for all gun purchases.
Moreover, Cook County, Illinois, already has an “assault weapons” ban. NPR reports that the ban also prohibits “high capacity” magazines and was unsuccessfully challenged in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals last year.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
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