CCRKBA says Chicago alderman should suffer like other gun owners

BELLEVUE, WA – Chicago Alderman Richard Mell ought to be prosecuted like any other negligent gun owner for failing to re-register his firearms under an ordinance he helped pass, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said recently.

“I don’t care if anti-gun Mayor Richard Daley supports giving Mell a break, and it doesn’t matter that Mell is the father-in-law of Gov. Rod Blagojevich,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “For years, the draconian ordinance supported by Mell and enforced by Daley has terrorized Chicago gun owners. It’s time for Mell to face his own music, and it’s time for Daley to just shut up.”

Mell has proposed an amendment to the existing law that would allow gun registration to re-open for a month, giving him amnesty.

Mell and Daley are claiming that this is for other gun owners in the city as well who may have let their registrations lapse.

“For years, the Daley Administration has engaged in goon squad demagoguery against gun owners,” Gottlieb observed, “but now all of a sudden, just because Alderman Mell finds himself on the wrong side of a law he supported, he and Daley want to do Chicago gun owners a favor. This magnanimity is a flimsy sham, and law-abiding firearm owners all over Illinois should be outraged.

“It is equally outrageous that Mell is blaming this lapse on an aide,” he added. “How stupid is that? Mell knows that gun owners are personally responsible for re-registering their firearms, and over the years, the city has shown no mercy for others who have failed to comply with the law. This guy shouldn’t be on the city council, he ought to be in an unemployment line, and even more than that, he ought to be facing charges in court for possession of unregistered guns inside the city.

“The sad fact is,” Gottlieb concluded, “that this proposed amnesty amendment would never be on the table if it weren’t designed specifically to help Alderman Mell. That anyone else might benefit is an accident, and both Mell and Daley know it. Other gun owners should be allowed to re-register, but Mell should lose on this sweetheart deal. Perhaps then he will fully understand just how insidious Chicago’s gun laws really are, and he will lead the fight to abolish them.”