Margaret Thatcher once famously diagnosed socialism as doomed to fail because eventually, the socialists will run out of other peoples' money:'
"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
— Students For Liberty (@sfliberty) August 13, 2025
— Margaret Thatcher pic.twitter.com/J86BWqVPio
I may have to propose an analog: the problem with blue city gun control is eventually you run out of other jurisdictions to blame.
Case in point; Chicago, long a synonym for both blinkered, myopic gun control and, simultaneously, carnage caussed by firearms - which may seem like a paradox, provided either you've never studied the issue, or ignored whatever you learned when you did study it.
Mayor Brandon Johnson exhumes a Daley-era evasion on the issue, sounding a little like the unmasked villain at the end of every episode of Scooby Doo, claiming that Chicago would be as peaceful as a Nebraska cornfield if it weren't for those darn red states:
Mayor Brandon Johnson: "Chicago will continue to have a violence problem as long as red states continue to have a gun problem." pic.twitter.com/vmCL7M1yI0
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) September 2, 2025
No doubt about it - Chicago has a bad homicide rate - suffering 573 homicides last year, a rate of 17.5 per 100,000 residents, which is to be fair down almost half from 2021, which was a record year nationwide. It's also well above the national average of 7.7 per 100,000.
But Mayor Johnson is blaming Chicago's neighbors, Indiana and Wisconsin - both places with much looser gun laws.
And it makes sense - until you look at the most recently-available numbers:
- Indiana's homicide rate is 6.5 - dropping to 3.3 if you leave out Democrat-run Indianapolis and Chicago suburb Gary,
- Wisconsin's rate is also in the low threes - and even Kenosha, an exurb of Chicago, is around 4.0 homicides per 100,000.
So if Chicago's crime rate is because of all those guns coming in from Wisconsin and Indiana, why don't both of those states have crime rates 4-5 times higher than they do?
Well, of course not, silly peasant. It's not just those two states.
it's also Orange Hitler:
Democrat Dick Durbin: There are too damn many guns in Chicago, and that's Trump's fault! pic.twitter.com/6RgEx00GQ6
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 3, 2025
Is there anything he can't do? Chicago's homicide problem dates back to when Trump was still a reality TV host . Also a Democrat.
Tom Knighton, at our sister publication Bearing Arms, has Mayor Johnson figured out:
See, what this does is allow Johnson to and the rest of the city's so-called leaders to do absolutely nothing to address violent crime in the Windy City while still looking like they actually give a damn about it.
But numerous other cities throughout the nation have run into violence issues, and they've taken steps to address them. They've done all sorts of things that have yielded real results that didn't infringe on anyone's rights. They may have been unable to enact gun control in their cities due to preemption, or they may have just not been interested. Some others did, but they didn't use gun control alone.
And there have been results.
The fact that Johnson is intent on blaming the president and red states for his city's problems ignores the fact that, without a demand for illegal guns, there wouldn't be an issue in the first place. Were it not for a criminal underclass that thrives in the city, there'd be no reason for anyone to traffic guns into the city.
In short, guns don't kill people.
People who have no regard for human life, much less personal property, whose depredations are enabled by the likes of Brandon Johnson and his party, kill people.
He hasn't quite run out of people to blame yet.
