Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is pointing the finger for the city’s shooting at President Trump after previously blaming Texas and the coronavirus pandemic.
The Democrat told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Tuesday that “military-grade weapons” plague the Windy City due to a lack of leadership by Mr. Trump.
“President Trump has said a lot of disparaging things about the city of Chicago,” she told the network anchor. “He likes to use us as a political punching bag. But if the president was really committed to helping us deal with our violence, he would do some easy things. One is: he would push for universal background checks. He would push for an assault weapons ban.
“As long as we are challenged with having states surrounding us — notably Indiana — that has very lax gun laws, where somebody can drive across the border and literally load up a vehicle with military-grade weapons and bring them back to the city of Chicago, we’re going to continue to be challenged,” she said.
Ms. Lightfoot’s remarks come after another bloody weekend in the city — 64 people were shot and 11 victims died by Monday.
The mayor’s argument hinges on a definition of “assault weapon” that applies only to the cosmetic features of a rifle; semi-automatic weapons available to civilians are often conflated with fully automatic weapons available to military personnel.
Ms. Lightfoot also blamed the coronavirus pandemic for harming the city’s fragile “ecosystem of public safety” on July 6.
A public spat with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in September 2019 also included her assertion that “60% of illegal firearms recovered in Chicago come from outside IL — mostly from states dominated by coward Republicans like you who refuse to enact common sense gun legislation. Keep our name out of your mouth.”
Her crime stats, however, also tell a different story: 60% involve guns from Illinois (40.4%) and neighboring Indiana (21%); 1.8% of Chicago’s guns come from Texas.
Chicago’s mayor blames Trump for her city’s soaring murder rate:
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 14, 2020
“If the president was really committed to helping us deal with our violence, he would do some easy things … He would push to make sure that people who were banned from getting on airplanes can’t get guns.” pic.twitter.com/2S0idD0yQd
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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