Rahm in D.C. as Chicago’s gun violence in national spotlight
Emanuel met with members of the Illinois House delegation and later huddled with other mayors at the “Attorney General’s Summit on Violent Crime.”
WASHINGTON — Mayor Rahm Emanuel hit the Capitol and a Justice Department conference on violent crime on Wednesday and talked about the Cubs when he met with President Barack Obama at the White House.
Among other items, Emanuel, Obama’s first chief of staff, discussed the Cubs playing in a wild- card game against the Pirates in Pittsburgh on Wednesday night. Emanuel planned to watch the game from one of the “Chicago” bars in this town.
The epidemic of gunrelated deaths in Chicago has injected the city into the 2016 presidential guncontrol debate, while over at City Hall, most African-American aldermen want Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy fired.
The mayor met with seven of the 18 members of the Illinois House delegation and Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., in the Capitol office of Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and later huddled with other mayors and Attorney General Loretta Lynch at the “Attorney General’s Summit on Violent Crime.”
After the meeting in Durbin’s office, I asked Emanuel about McCarthy, and he underscored his support for him.
“I appreciate the frustration about gun violence on the South and West sides,” Emanuel said. “As I said though, the focus should be about the access to guns, cracking down on guns, and not about Garry.”
Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., told me he backs ousting McCarthy, though he said he did not seek out Emanuel to discuss it. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., called for McCarthy’s removal on Wednesday. The two lawmakers’ districts take in the South and West side wards where aldermen want McCarthy out.
And on a related matter, I asked Emanuel about GOP presidential hopefuls Donald Trump, Chris Christie and Carly Fiorina, who point to gun deaths in Chicago as a reason more gun safety laws are not needed.
The latest horrible gun slaughter in this country, this time in Oregon, prompted Trump to say Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” that “the strictest laws in the United States — in the world— for guns happens to be Chicago where they have a lot of problems.”
Christie and Fiorina have made similar comments and Chicago and its gun laws have become part of the GOP narrative, especially because the violence is happening in Obama’s city and, in some cases, not all that far from his Kenwood home.
When I wrote about Chicago’s “strict” laws on Friday, McCarthy sent me a critical email, telling me I was wrong. “The short story is that criminals don’t go to jail for illegal gun possession here,” McCarthy said.
Frank Main, Sun-Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning crime reporter, has long been tracking how court decisions and Illinois General Assembly actions have eroded Chicago’s gun laws.
But the main point that Trump, Christie and Fiorina should know if they want to be president is that one city’s gun laws— no matter how strict— cannot stop gun violence. Guns flow into Chicago from other places.
Said Emanuel: “Access to laws and penalties associated with gun use and access to opportunities are all part of the solution.” j