We covered this story in the Digest, but the CCRKBA (Citizens Committee Right to Keep and Bear Arms) press release on Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s latest anti-2A initiative is a classic of the genre. In fact, it would be funny if it weren’t so true. Make the jump for the text. Meanwhile, stealing a page from Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, Texas Senator Ted Cruz has written to the two bullied banks to invite them down to the Lone Star State. Click here to read it. What are the odds the Justice Department will investigate the former White House Chief of Staff for violating the Hobbs Act of 1951?
BELLEVUE, WA – Anti-gun Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is taking his demagoguery to a new level by attempting to coerce banks into refusing service to firearms manufacturers, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.
CBS News in Chicago reported that Emanuel was pressuring two major banks, identified as Bank of America and TD Bank, to stop lines of credit to Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger, two of the largest gun makers in the industry. In letters to bank executives, Emanuel reportedly said he wanted to send a message to gun makers that they must buckle under to gun control measures being pushed by the Obama administration.
“This is outrageous,” said CCRKBA (Citizens Committee Right to Keep and Bear Arms) Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Mayor Emanuel is acting like a Chicago gangster instead of a public servant, and we are very concerned that there might be legal ramifications. How dare the mayor engage in this kind of anti-gun lobbying effort, trying to cut off operating capital to a pair of perfectly legal companies that happen to be engaged in perhaps the most heavily-regulated business in the country.
“Gun owners and people who believe in the Bill of Rights should stop giving Chicago a line of credit by purchasing municipal bonds,” he added. “Rahm wants to send a message, and the nation should send him a reply.
“Mayor Emanuel is allegedly contending that lines of credit should dry up unless Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger submit to operating their businesses the way anti-gunners demand,” Gottlieb continued. “That conduct seems more in the realm of a street thug than a political leader, but then, again, we’re talking about a mayor who presides over a city with Draconian gun laws and a murder rate rivaling a Third World country.
Emanuel is a career anti-gunner who served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, typically as point man on some kind of gun control effort.
“Mayor Emanuel seems to be under the illusion that he can force banks to act as his surrogates in an unrelenting campaign to crush the firearms industry and erase the Second Amendment,” Gottlieb said. “This is insidious and we hope the banks recognize it for the kind of below-the-belt political chicanery for which Chicago politicians have become famous. No wonder they sometimes refer to him as ‘The Godfather’.”