Pro-Gun-Control Mayor's Office in Damage Control Mode After Private Text Messages Go Public
The Democratic mayor of St. Louis admitted in a private text message that gun control doesn’t work, and now she is in damage control mode to prove she is every bit as radical as the rest of the people running America’s large cities.
Mayor Tishaura Jones has been on the record making proclamations that her crime-ridden city would be safer if only her party had the power to ban firearms.
Privately, however, Jones told those closest to her they needed to look no farther than across the Missouri-Illinois state line at heavily gun-controlled Chicago for evidence that gun control policies had failed.
KSDK-TV obtained the message and many others after they were released following a public records request.
“Chicago has strict gun laws as well but that doesn’t deter gun violence,” Jones wrote on March 21 in a group chat with her father and adviser Richard Callow, the outlet reported Friday.
“It’s about investing in the people,” she explained.
The mayor’s private thoughts on gun control don’t square with comments she has made in public.
Last month, one teen was killed and nine other people were injured in downtown St. Louis during what was supposed to be a party in the notoriously violent city.
Jones blamed the violence on two familiar foes: Republicans and the gun.
“Our state’s lax gun laws make our challenge even more difficult,” Jones said after the shooting, CNN reported.
The mayor added, “The Missouri legislature failed to restrict minors from carrying guns, a common sense solution to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of children.”
Apparently, Hillary Clinton isn’t the only Democrat who believes in holding both public and private opinions on the issues.
In the days since Jones’ shockingly sensible message became public, she has dialed it back and offered context through others, presumably to save herself from the ire of her fellow Democrats.
“Gun laws are just one part of the solution,” spokesman Nick Desideri said in a statement Friday, according to KSDK. “There’s a difference between deterring behavior and making it harder to get firearms and weaponry; for example, there’s no doubt that gun laws in the blue region around Newark help reduce violence as opposed to here.”
St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell also came to Jones’ defense.
“If you take someone’s text messages, you don’t get the full context of what they … mean,” he said in a statement obtained by KDSK. “And I’ve talked to Mayor Tishaura about this issue a lot of times. And she believes in common sense gun safety laws, just as I do.”
There has been no shortage of comments from Democrats defending the mayor, who accurately pointed out gun control doesn’t work.
In an unfiltered and private forum, Jones acknowledged that Chicago’s strict gun laws have failed to make a dent in the city’s crime.
If anything, those laws have made the issue worse as the people most likely to be armed are people who don’t follow any laws, much less firearms laws.
This is something that is discussed every Monday as the city’s weekend violence makes headlines.
But for the “progressive” thought crime of making an admission that urban violence is about more than a trigger pull, Jones is now enlisting others to bolster her liberal credentials.
Meanwhile, people will continue to be victimized by violent crime in St. Louis just as they will be in Chicago.
More families will suffer losing people they love while Democrats like Jones crusade against guns that have been legal in the U.S. since long before the issues of urban decay and deranged mass shooters.
A root problem of all of this violence is one that Democrats are incapable of acknowledging: Today’s boys are more likely than previous generations to grow up in secular homes without fathers.
That problem can’t be addressed by public leaders who deny the existence of God and argue that gender is part of some fluid spectrum.
How can young boys be shaped into good men by their fathers if being a man is itself subjective? The left argues gender is a social construct, so what is a father?
We can assume many Democrats have both public and private positions on those questions.
The party will continue to use popular anti-Second Amendment rhetoric rather than face the wrath of liberal voters who are becoming increasingly radical.
Jones will blame the guns, even though she is on the record acknowledging that violence is perpetrated by people and not by objects.
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