Washington Times Editorial: “Guns needed to stop Chicago murders”

I would like to point out an excellent editorial that appeared in Thursday’s Washington Times, entitled “Guns needed to stop Chicago murders.” An excerpt from the article:

Since 1982, Chicago has banned the private ownership of handguns and rifles by requiring a convoluted registration process designed to be impossible to complete. Exceptions to the rules enable politicians and their personal friends to own and even carry handguns – but nobody else. This unconstitutional scheme has been a colossal failure. Before the ban took effect, Chicago’s murder rate had been falling relative to the nine other largest cities, the 50 largest cities, the five counties that border Cook County, and the United States as a whole. After the ban, Chicago’s murder rate rose relative to all these locations. During the first 19 years of the ban, there were just three years when the murder rate was as low as when the ban started. . . Such facts are not important to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who continues to insist that more gun-control laws are the “solution” to his crime problem – as if hardened thugs carefully consulted the book of municipal ordinances before embarking on a crime spree. A more rational analysis would conclude that the restrictions apply only to good, law-abiding people looking for a way to defend themselves and their families. When the thugs know victims are defenseless, they pounce.