Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is now working on a gun control ordinance for the Windy City after an assault weapons ban stalled in the Illinois General Assembly.
The mayor refused Friday to give out details of what he’s planning to propose, but he did touch on the assault weapons ban, a limit on the size of ammunition clips and instituting background checks “on all sales, wherever they take place, wherever the location may be.”
He said he refuses to stay idle — “waiting is not a strong suit” — until state legislators take up gun control following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Connecticut.
“It will compliment our activities of putting more police on the street, having after-school programs … It will complement our gun seizures,” the mayor said Thursday in the Budlong Woods Library.
Chicago ended 2012 with a bang — an astonishing 516 gun-related deaths in one year.
In the first week of 2013, Chicago had already outpaced 2012’s gun deaths with 12 homicides.
Gun advocates argue laws have had little impact non the violence, noting that Chicago has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country. Until a federal appeals court ruled last month that Illinois’ concealed carry ban was unconstitutional, it had remained the only state in the country where nobody could legally carry a weapon.
Emanuel said he’s frustrated that the Illinois General Assembly failed to deal with assault weapons during the lame-duck session that ended Tuesday. He said he will introduce his gun legislation during a city council meeting next week.
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