« BACK  |  PRINT

RS

FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR

Mayor Daley points gun at reporter.

As a 'joke.'

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  May 21st, 2010 at 10:42 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

I understand that Mayor Richard Daley is a liberal Illinois Democratic politician – which is semantically equivalent to ‘pig-ignorant about guns’ – so let’s go over some of the basics for him about firearm safety.  Let’s also discuss some core assumptions that Dick needs to embrace:

  • GUNS ARE NOT TOYS.
  • GUNS ARE NOT PROPS.
  • IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHETHER OR NOT A GUN IS LOADED, IT IS.
  • IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHETHER OR NOT A GUN IS READY TO FIRE, IT IS.
  • NEVER POINT A GUN AT A LIVING CREATURE UNLESS IT IS A MATTER OF EITHER SELF-DEFENSE OR RESPONSIBLE HUNTING.
  • NEVER POINT A GUN AT A REPORTER.

So [Mick Dumke] asked: since guns are readily available in Chicago even with a ban in place, do you really think it’s been effective?

[snip]

“Oh!” Daley said. “It’s been very effective!”

He grabbed a rifle, held it up, and looked right at me. He was chuckling but there was no smile.

“If I put this up your—ha!—your butt—ha ha!—you’ll find out how effective this is!”

Via the Top of the Ticket and @baseballcrank.  The room went on to have a good laugh, apparently; one wonders if they’d continue to laugh the next time a kid who hasn’t been taught gun safety imitates Mayor Daley’s behavior, only with a loaded pistol instead of a bayoneted rifle.  Actually, I doubt it: they’ll all probably blame everybody except themselves.

Moe Lane

PS: No, people cannot ‘lighten up’ on things like this.  Accidental shootings usually involve precisely this kind of casual disrespect for firearms, and this kind of casual disrespect is easily avoidable.  A small girl in Texas died Tuesday night because her sibling used a gun for a toy: do we really want our elected officials reinforcing that particular mindset?

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Tags: , ,

COMMENTS

POSTING RULES  |  LOGIN TO COMMENT  |  REGISTER TODAY
  • acat

    So, this is really no surprise.

    Sad, pathetic, stupid, yes. Bloody dangerous, absolutely.

    Not surprising.

    Mew

  • shaitra

    You can never have enough focus on gun safety.

  • Locked and Loaded

    I have as much contempt for Daley as any responsible gun owner, and I think his verbal response here was irresponsible and insane, but the reporter did not say the gun was pointed his way, and the video I saw shows the gun was picked up off the table and laid back down – no pointing.

    http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2010/05/20/mayor-daley-threatens-to-shoot-the-messengernamely-me

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    Sorry, I?m an absolutist on this kind of thing. The second that you treat a firearm with anything less than complete respect you?re running an unacceptable risk. It?s like the end of War Games: the only winning move here is not to play. Say a bullet was in the chamber, the safety was off, and the gun went off; Daley?s responsible for where that bullet ends up, even if he was ?being careful.?

  • Locked and Loaded

    http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2010/05/gun-control-butt-of-daley-joke.html

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    …at about 0:01 seconds in this video, and didn’t really ever get it back. I don’t even think the idiot looked to see whether anybody was downrange of the muzzle.

    Look, if it was you or another person familiar with guns I’d probably be just tut-tutting. But this guy endangered the room.

  • Locked and Loaded

    in his handling of that weapon, he did nothing that wasn’t done in my gun classes or any gun demonstration that I have ever attended. I wholeheartedly agree that safety is of paramount concern.

    Moe, I appreciate your excellent journalism, and I want to continue to enjoy it. I think you would agree with me that journalists (meaning those opposite the MSM actors) must be brutally honest and accurate.

    I sure don’t want to argue this any further, so for now I just want to wish you continued success in the important work you are doing.

  • johnt

    Perhaps this ape might consider that the barricades in the Court Building are there, at the very least, in part due to our muslim friends, the ones who get more respect, even while killing, than some American citizens. As suggested by the ape’s grunting.
    It will be a very interesting day when or if The Law comes for everyone’s guns.

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    It is not my intent to denigrate your position; I freely admit that I may have a bee in my bonnet about this sort of thing. :)

  • earlgrey

    We don’t have to argue the gun safety issue to just agree this is not right and frankly makes me a little queazy.

  • spepper

    I don’t think “liberals” are “pig ignorant” about gun ownership or the Second Amendment– they know EXACTLY what it means for common citizens to own firearms: it means that the liberal elitist globalist tyrants lose their ability to control, intimidate, or assault via goon squads, without serious (and perhaps, armed) response from those citizens…….Daley is of course a well-known goon squad commander– just ask any aircraft owner who formerly kept their vehicles based at the extinct airport known as Meigs Field……….

  • aesthete

    Most conservatives (particularly 2nd Amendment folks) know the rules of gun safety, whereas liberals (regardless of their political views, don’t have a clue about them, except that the black ones are scary-looking. This incident with Mayor Daley puts their view of conservatives as whooping barbarians with itchy trigger fingers in perspective, don’t you think?

  • nessa

    Any idiot from Chicago? You’re absolutely right.

    This one, on the other hand, does it with unmistakable poise and grace…

    Never a loss of muzzle awareness and the implied threat was the same that the Second Amendment has issued since it’s ratification.

  • The_Gadfly

    it’s clipped so you can barely see the gun. But Moe is correct. In fact, I was going to gently chide him for the third line, which is not what I have been repeatedly taught is the correct statement:

    Even if you know the gun is empty, you still treat it as if it were loaded and the safety was off.

    It is more a matter of developing and reinforcing good habits so that on the single occasion on which you don’t realize the gun is loaded, bad things don’t happen.

  • wolfster38

    Well DICK, here you are always preaching about gun violence and accidental shootings and what do you do? Act stupidly with a gun in your hands. See the problem is not gun ownership the problem is criminals have easier access to guns then the normal people and some people who have guns (like you) are stupid jackasses who don’t think a gun is loaded before they shoot themselves in the foot like you did (figuratively speaking). If a person would point a gun jokingly at a police officer he would die and thats no joke. Just like its no joke what you have done. For the love of God I don’t know why anyone votes or would vote for you. You have now proven with all your higher than mighty anti gun crap that you are the leading moron on this issue. Have a nice day DICK !
    P.S. Maybe you could talk about how unsafe baseball bats are since your son almost killed a person while beating him with one. It would seem you have more experience with bats than guns.

  • http://www.dcworksforus.com Kenny Solomon

    ……so it’s up to me.

    It’s the gun’s fault !

    If all those evil guns were taken away from every typical bitter God-clinging so-called patriotic American, the need for such an upstanding person as Mayor Daley would never have been put in the position of needing to teach a lesson to a reporter who would dare question the good mayor.

    — — — —

    Molon Labe.

  • http://pocketchangeproductions.net/ anotherindyfilmguy

    He grabbed a rifle, held it up, and looked right at me. He was chuckling but there was no smile.

    ?If I put this up your?ha!?your butt?ha ha!?you?ll find out how effective this is!?

    For a moment the room was very, very quiet. I took a good look at the weapon. It had a long bayonet. (Was it seized during the Civil War?)

    ?If I put a round up your?ha ha!?

    How do these insane/stupid people get into power and stay there?

  • Carolynp

    The reporter states the gun ban is ineffective and Daley proves that just having a gun can scare the crap out of people, you don’t have to shoot it. At the moment, only criminals have that ability, oh, and the mayor, big diff.

  • The Old Dog

    he was generally respected (and feared) but he pretty much told you how it was and had the power to make it so. Whether you liked how it was or not, Chicago ran pretty well back then and was rough but prosperous (listen to Steve Goodman’s song ‘Lincoln Park Pirates’ for an example). As is often said, a benevolent dictatorship is the best form of government, but succession is problematic. After hizzoner died, a series of political clowns briefly held the office. Mayor Jane Byrne was a riot. Her and her tipsy husband appeared all over the city and were always good for a laugh, the newsies loved her because her antics sold newspapers. Chicago then elected hizzoner’s son who had been known as Dickie Daley when he was younger. Now most of us think of him as Little Dick Daley. Even though he keeps getting re-elected (in Chicago you could run a yellow dog named ‘Daley’ and it would win), he doesn’t get the respect the old man got. Sure, the old man did a lot of back room dealing but Little Dickie never learned how to pull it off without looking like a sleazebag.

  • kowalski

    The reporter is from the Reader and the Reader is the most reliably leftist Free weekly in Chicago, so the question was perceived by Daley as an act of a traitor coming from that quarter.

    But at least Daley showed that he should never, ever be allowed to own or handle a firearm. That’s a One Man Gun Ban I can support.

  • kowalski

    I appreciated the way the reporter ended his article. It’s actually a kind of inside joke about people who have ever had dealings with Da Mayor and his Officials:

    “I had to agree.”

    You bet you did. Which is about the strongest closing statement he could make given the fact that Da Mayor basically threatened to basically thrust and fire a bayonetted rifle into his anus.

    Now let’s not keep talking about the symbology and just talk about the rest of the facts that Daley just doesn’t care about, but before we do, I want to mention something again:

    The Chicago Reader doesn’t have the “R” backward as their journalistic logo for nothing — Daley knew who the reporter was, and what newspaper he was reporting for, and what that guy got was one of the rarely seen in public examples of Daley *really* laying down the law, in anger — to people who are nominally on his side but have confounded him with an honest question (which isn’t hard).

    Chicago is still a very heavy place. The machine only turns in one direction. And none of the cogwheels better start asking questions that might make people think about it turning the other way, buddy.

    What the reporter from the Reader should do next, really, is try to find out if he can get a firearms license in Chicago.

    Anyone want to lay odds on his chances, even if he has a spotless criminal record?

  • kowalski

    I think the guy needs all the self-protection he can get. He should look into it.