BELLEVUE, WA – Anti-gun Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has taken one more step toward turning his city into a police state by planning to give police fully automatic M4 carbines, while still fighting to block the gun rights of citizens not only in Chicago but throughout Illinois, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

“Here’s one of the most anti-gun mayors in the nation, who has been trying to ban common semiautomatic rifles for years, but now he’s rushing to turn his police into a paramilitary force doing battle against street gangs and other criminals,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, co-author of America Fights Back: Armed Self-Defense in a Violent Age. “Yet this guy works overtime to make it impossible for average citizens to protect themselves against the same criminal element.

“If Daley thinks turning Chicago neighborhoods into gulags, where only police have guns, is going to keep people safe,” he asked, “he is horribly mistaken. They tried it in Washington, D.C. and it’s been a disaster!

“Daley has decried the violence in Chicago,” Gottlieb said, “but the mayor seems to ignore the likelihood that it is his own urban policies that have made the Windy City so dangerous. The good citizens of Chicago deserve the chance to fight back and make a difference. Instead, Daley sends lobbyists to Springfield to erode the gun rights of Chicago residents and all Illinois citizens, leaving them first defenseless, and now likely to be caught in a crossfire.”

Daley’s effort has attracted the attention of Catholic priest Michael Pfleger, the man who tried to incite a crowd last year outside of Chuck’s Gun Shop in suburban Riverdale to “snuff” proprietor John Riggio and any politician who stands in the way of Pfleger’s gun control agenda.

“When Daley’s solution to violence involves crackpots like Pfleger,” Gottlieb noted, “the city is in trouble, and not just from criminals. It is time for a new approach, not one that turns police into an army of occupation, but one in which citizens can defend themselves and their families, without demagogues like Daley standing in their way.”