BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) today said Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s new anti-gun billboard campaign to keep guns out of his city “lacks truth in advertising.”
The Daley ad campaign warns visitors from Indiana and Mississippi – two states from whence most guns are allegedly shipped to Chicago – to “Stop bringing guns to Chicago or go to jail.” Plans reportedly call for launching a related broadcast campaign, perhaps with the warning delivered by O.J. Simpson defense attorney Johnnie Cochran, suggesting that people not have a gun in their home.
“If Daley believed in truth in advertising,” observed CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “his billboards would actually tell people from Mississippi and Indiana to ‘Come here unarmed and be a crime victim.’ Chicago under Daley is the murder capital of Illinois.”
That attorney Cochran might appear in the anti-gun commercials brought a quick response from CCRKBA Executive Director Joe Waldron: “If Nicole Simpson had been armed, Cochran might never have had a client.”
A report in the Chicago Sun-Times suggested that Mayor Daley thinks his billboards will scare “even the most hardened career criminals.”
“How dumb is that,” Gottlieb questioned. “If Daley were honest about this, he’d admit to the media that the real message to hardened career criminals is that they get a target-rich environment in the Windy City. Daley might just as well tell thugs they have an open season on unarmed victims, with no license required and no bag limit.
“Instead of threatening criminals with jail,” Gottlieb added, “Daley is actually threatening law-abiding citizens. His billboard would be far more honest if it told visitors, ‘Stop defending yourself, because in Chicago, you’ll go to jail.”