BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today is calling on Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to resign and “admit his incompetence” after Wednesday’s report that there have been 1,000 shootings in Chicago so far this year.

“Rahm Emanuel’s administration has been a disaster for public safety,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “His incompetence and anti-gun ideology as a public official are responsible for his inability to deal with this situation. So far this year, there have been more than 170 homicides, and the mayor has been all talk and no results.

“His gun control and crime reduction policies have hurt the most vulnerable citizens in Chicago,” he continued. “Under Emanuel’s leadership, the city has never really complied with the spirit of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago. His restrictive policies have prevented gun stores, where people could obtain the tools to defend themselves and their families. His administration has resisted shooting ranges where citizens could get training and practice. Six years after McDonald, there are still no gun stores or ranges inside the city limits. There is no encouragement to fight back against the violent thugs and drug gangs who prey on the public and have turned the city into a slaughterhouse.

“While the mayor has allowed his city to descend toward anarchy,” Gottlieb added, “his administration has worked aggressively to keep the public disarmed and vulnerable, making them all victims of Emanuel’s failed policies.

“When an elected official consistently fails to lead, when his policies result in more suffering for the citizens he is supposed to represent, and when his strategies have proven to be one huge demonstrable failure, then it is time for him to step down,” he insisted.

“The Chicago Tribune today is calling the shooting total ‘a grim milestone,’ and that certainly describes the overall situation,” Gottlieb observed. “Rahm Emanuel has been a failure at making his city safer. Instead, the carnage has taken Chicago backwards, and the outlook is grim so long as Emanuel stays in office, pushing an agenda that has surrendered the streets and neighborhoods to a criminal element that seems to thrive on violence.

“It is time for Rahm Emanuel to go,” he concluded.