BELLEVUE, WA – Calling it a “grotesque attempt to exploit a national tragedy,” the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) condemned Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s call for more restrictive gun laws as a response to the terrorist attack of Sept. 11.

“Richard Daley has just proven to the citizens of Chicago, and the entire nation, that his political agenda is simply disconnected from reality,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Suggesting that additional gun laws is the proper response to prevent terrorist acts is a grotesque attempt to exploit a national tragedy.”

Added Joe Waldron, CCRKBA executive director: “Daley admits that no guns were used in the Sept. 11 attack, yet he still maintains that more restrictions need to be placed on law abiding citizens who want firearms to protect themselves, not just from terrorists, but from the thugs that Daley’s administration has not been able to take off the streets. Richard Daley’s personal anti-gun obsession should not be the basis for creating public policy.”

Earlier in the week it was reported that an innocent man was framed by Chicago police detectives and wrongly imprisoned for a 1979 murder while Daley was Cook County state’s attorney. Daley declined to apologize to James Newsome for the wrongful conviction that occurred under his watch. Instead, Daley’s full attention seems to be on having Chicago city attorneys draft his anti-gun legislation.

“The same Richard Daley who locked up an innocent man for a crime he did not commit now wants to lock up the firearm civil rights of Illinois citizens without the slightest justification,” Gottlieb stated. “That’s not simply wrong, it is insidious.”

Daley wants to ban the sale of several types of semiautomatic firearms, and require the Draconian registration of some types of guns.

“That’s exactly the strategy lawmakers in California used to first identify gun owners, then order those law-abiding citizens to turn in or get rid of their guns,” Waldron noted. “Mayor Daley conveniently ignores the fact that none of the gun laws passed over the last 25 years as a panacea to violence did anything to stop the Sept. 11 terrorists. For him to think a new anti-gun law might change that simply does not pass the smell test.”