BELLEVUE, WA – Noting public frustration over the Senate Democrats’ blocking of legislation to crack down on sanctuary cities and their renewed push for new gun control laws, plus the announced plan to release thousands of prison inmates early, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today that an Italian mayor faced with rising crime in his region may have the right plan to alleviate public concerns.
“Mayor Gianluca Buonanno of Borgosesia in Piedmont in northern Italy has offered 250 Euros apiece to citizens to help them pay for a gun,” noted CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “This is no tongue-in-cheek joke, either. The mayor has made that offer after accusing the Italian government of failing to protect honest citizens with laws that seem soft on bad guys.”
According to the Daily Mail, Mayor Buonanno’s offer is “to allow people to defend themselves from delinquents, who the government is privileging.” Here in America, Gottlieb observed, Senate Democrats working to protect their far left urban political allies have essentially given the same “privilege” to often dangerous illegal aliens for whom sanctuary cities serve as magnets.
“The Justice Department is about to release thousands of prisoners to relieve overcrowding,” Gottlieb said. “About two-thirds are supposed to be supervised and the rest will be deported, but considering that the suspect in the murder of Kate Steinle this summer in San Francisco had been repeatedly deported, after being convicted of crimes in this country, that’s not reassuring.
“Many of these people may quickly return to lives of crime, no matter where they’re from,” he added. “Honest citizens, especially those in low-income inner city neighborhoods, deserve some means of personal protection. How sad that a solution should come from a mayor half a world away; a man who understands that armed citizens are a strong deterrent to such predators, while our own politicians genuflect to political correctness.
“When government becomes part of the problem rather than part of the solution,” Gottlieb said, “the citizens must act. Mayor Buonanno’s offer to help his constituents buy defensive firearms is an example that his American contemporaries could follow, instead of pushing gun control and protecting this sanctuary city nonsense.”