Let’s be clear, Mayor Rahm Emanuel deserves credit for his anti-gun violence efforts over the years as a congressman, White House chief of staff and mayor. At Friday’s board meeting, he pointed out that he had helped pass the Brady law and the now-defunct assault weapons ban in Congress. When the Supreme Court tossed out Chicago’s ban on handgun ownership, the mayor guided through sensible new local laws.
But we’ll stand by our view, first expressed in an editorial late last year, that the mayor could use his bully pulpit much more to push through better gun laws, especially in Springfield. Chicago and Illinois sorely need a vigorous champion of common-sense gun control, someone as willing to be as identified with the cause as former Mayor Michael Bloomberg was in New York.
I’m guessing that’s something Emanuel never expected to be criticized for. And “Not as authoritarian as Michael Bloomberg” is both a very low bar and … well, not normally a criticism.
