BELLEVUE, WA – The weekend arrest of two brothers now charged in the slaying of Nykea Aldridge is further evidence that gun rights aren’t the problem in Chicago, the system is, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

“What we have learned about this case is an outrage,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “The suspects are brothers and both are known gang members and repeat offenders. One of them has been identified as a career gun offender who has been on parole since February. The other was on some sort of daily break from an electronic monitoring bracelet, and that guy has six prior felony arrests.

“Last month there were 65 homicides in Chicago,” he continued, “and it looks like this year’s body count could be way ahead of last year’s. It is painfully obvious that the system is broken in Chicago, the city is out of control, and proposing new gun control measures isn’t going to solve a thing.

“It is time for the good citizens of Chicago to recognize that their city is in chaos, and that those responsible are not just a bunch of thugs on the South and West sides, but the people who are supposed to be in charge at city hall,” Gottlieb stated. “This is what happens with decades of one party control. Their policies have failed, their strategies have failed and yet they are blind to all of it because they cannot admit those failures.

“Instead,” he observed, “they fight common sense at every turn. They let career criminals roam the streets, preying on and murdering innocent victims like Aldridge, while they do everything in their power to prevent law-abiding citizens from defending themselves.

“This nonsense must stop,” Gottlieb said. “Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his administration evidently can’t do the job, so maybe it’s time for him to step down, write his memoirs and open the door for a dramatic change in leadership. Emanuel and his predecessors have made a habit of blaming guns and gun rights for the city’s woes, but so long as recidivist thugs continually terrorize their neighborhoods, rhetoric about keeping guns out of the wrong hands is just political lip service.”