Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot
Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
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She also wants to use gang shootings involving illegal GLOCK switches and auto sears as an excuse to ban standard capacity magazines.

After a shooting in East Garfield Park left 14 people wounded, Mayor Lori Lightfoot urged state lawmakers Tuesday to ban assault rifles and devices that turn semiautomatic weapons into machine guns.

“Last night’s shooting reminds us that there are too many weapons of war available to criminals,” Lightfoot said in a written statement about Monday night’s shooting in the 2700 block of West Flournoy Street. “We must have a statewide ban, and I urge the legislature to act.”

Mayoral spokesman Ryan Johnson said Lightfoot was “referring to assault weapons and weapons modifications that create automatic firing.”

Her appeal came days after a Sun-Times, WBEZ and NPR investigation found that Chicago police in recent years have recovered an increasing number of extended magazines and “auto sears,” small devices known on the street as “switches” that allow semiautomatic handguns to fire automatically.

At the same time, the number of machine gun prosecutions and mass shootings has risen. It’s unclear, though, whether a switch-equipped handgun was used in Monday’s mass shooting.

Sources said rifle rounds were recovered at the scene and that an automatic weapon appeared to be among multiple guns used. But Johnson and police spokesman Don Terry cited the ongoing investigation in declining to comment on the specific firepower.

Switches are banned federally, along with bump stocks that similarly turn semiautomatic rifles into automatic weapons. Switches and bump stocks are considered machine guns under federal law — even when they aren’t attached to a firearm.

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68 COMMENTS

  1. Your fucking ads covering 3/4 of my phone’s screen is making reading your articles almost impossible. Fire the idiot doing this.

        • Mine too yesterday, very annoying LARGE ad…Today the size has shrunk to about an inch high and vanished after a few seconds.

          Lightfoot is a buffoon.

      • Ad blocking browsers are your friend. Vivaldi and Brave are two that I use with pleasantly clear-screen results

    • It’s you’re own damn fault if you see ads on the internet. Stop living in the past.
      Use Brave.

      • It’s coming to what’s super to be a reputable news and media post and it’s over filled with trashy ads and pop ups. Not even Shannon Watts has pop ups and stupid click bait ads on her site. TTAG will be stagnant and never grow if their website shows they can’t be taken seriously. For all we know they could be selling our emails and info too!!!

      • I don’t use ad blockers because normally they don’t bother me and sometimes I click on them to help the owners of the site and/or I’m interested in the ad. However when you can’t read the article because of the size of the ads without any way around it then you’re just pissing people off.

        • Leave it to Lori to make a highly illegal item even more illegal. (because we all know how well the tough tough Chicago gun laws work already) The problem in Chicago is simple. Cook County jail has a revolving door. Arrested for something major, booked and outta jail in days. Come Jan 1, no CASH BAIL for anything up to and including second degree murder. Book em and set em loose. #Winning #for#criminals

          Makes me sad that I live here and this is really going to happen. Thankfully, I never go into my once favorite city on the planet any longer. I miss it, but it’s just not worth the risk to me. Yeah, it’s a real shame

    • Ahh..maybe that’s why I don’t see the ads. I don’t use my phone. I access TTAG via PC. When Dan and crew “upgraded” the site to its current format, it became horrible on a phone screen and impossible to see *who* is replying to *whom* on the comments. I much prefer the previous format.

      The only ads I see are off to the side and out of the way.

        • I utilize a modest adblocker. Prohibits pop-ups, but allows certain ones through. As hawkeye concedes below, I recognize the need for TTAG to keep the lights on, and while I typically ignore ads, I *have* clicked on a select few, and actually purchased a product from one of the vendors.

          I prefer reading dedicated Sponsor articles posted to TTAG over banner ads. Articles (or press releases) typically provide more information on the highlighted product, and allow me to stay on this site.

          My 2 cents.

        • I’ve never ever had ads either…I’ve always had ad blockers on my computers, since available thinking about 14 years….if you have an ad blocker you can while on any website page click on the their small red hexagon logo or just look at the small black box on the red hexagon and it, shows a fluctuating number as an example mine is showing 158 ads blocked at this moment on The Truth About Guns website, wow it just jumped to 172, 177, 179, 183.

      • I could be on any one of 2 desktops, a laptop, an ipad, or phone, depending. I rotate the screen to horizontal on the ipad and phone, and then can see the hierarchy just fine. YMMV.

        As for ads, well, gotta make the boat payment somehow. It’s subscription or ads. Could be worse, at least it isn’t subscription AND ads.

      • I want to support the site. I click on some of the ads for the benefit of the owner’s of the site but when you can’t read more than two sentences without scrolling that’s just ridiculous.

    • Yeah me too! TTAG has been quite a bit worse newbies. No excuse but I rarely view it on a ‘puter. Anywho Groot is a critter with 70 some cops as a security detail. What a waste🙄So is minor giving “advice”…

  2. Perhaps there are too many criminals seeking these “weapons of war”?
    Oh, silly me. I assume she sees the criminals as the problem. Rather she sees the rest of us and our inalienable rights as the problem.

    • From all her statements, it seems she thinks the guns are the problem and those gins are all going out there by themselves and shooting people. Making something illegal is a whiff in the air for a criminal who doesn’t follow the law in the first place – and its a political dodge for Lightfoot. She can ban this and ban that and it won’t make a hill of beans difference in the violence – so she will just blame guns as an easy way out. Because actually tackling the criminal problem is waaaaay harder and slower to accomplish.

      • Well bless her heart because she is trying against her own ignorance on the topic.

        She can’t go too far because her constituents and community organizers will object. But if she doesn’t go far enough she’ll appear to be too soft on criminals.

  3. Maybe make it so it’s against the law to break the law. No murder, assault, robbery. Do these things and you are going to jail! And for extra punishment, make it so criminals aren’t allowed to use weapons in a crime. Or even possess weapons like guns. Or machine guns. Yeah those would be good laws.

  4. So she wants the gang-bangers to go from
    BRAAAAAAP BRAAAAAAP
    to
    BRAAAP BRAAAP
    or even
    BAM BAM BAM … BAM BAM BAM …

    Yeah, good luck with that. If they’re willing to go out and fight a gang war, what’s another felony or two on top of the crimes already being committed? Especially when the repercussions seem to be quite limited in any case.

    • When you’re willing to kill a man in cold blood and face murder charges, the rest of it seems like an inconvenience at most.

        • “…in Chicago most will never face a murder charge.”

          That’s the upside of a “Snitches get Stitches” culture that is *enforced* by the community it’s in.

          With no witnesses to come forward and testify, no prosecutions can be made. Thug freedom reigns… 🙁

  5. As long as that ad keeps popping up I will not buy Hi Mountain Seasoning. And that is exactly the kind of thing I use as stocking stuffers. I emailed Hi Mountain the same. No Reply and the ad rolls on.

  6. Umm full auto is illegal under Illinois Law already. It’s not our fault that the prosecutor’s office is a joke.

    Wait till those people with full auto switches who are using them on others get let out under the “SAFE-T” act and are going out and shooting other people or carjacking within a week.

    Also, a “glock switch” is not a weapon of war. Never heard of an army using them ever. Even SOCOM could just get real G18s.

    • So why don’t F-Troop descend on Chicago to enforce federal law on unregistered machineguns? Is it a lack of political will?

      • think they tried that under Trump…got their ass shot up…and haven’t been back since…

  7. I wonder if the GOOD people of Chicago, ever ask themselves: Who actually voted for this person to be Mayor of the City? My guess: it was all the people affiliated with criminal acts, and the 100’s or 1000’s, that might’ve been promised some job if they did vote.

  8. You can 3d print a fully automatic AR15 sear or Glock switch (it just depresses the cruciform and prevents reset) at your local library or YMCA.

    Good luck with these laws.

    • With some basic machining skill and a drill press you can bore a hole through the middle of an AR-15 grip screw, tap it for threads, and run a threaded rod through it to butt up against your mil-spec disconnector to reduce the trigger weight and/or enable bump fire, at the cost of rendering your safety selector inoperable.

    • “You can 3d print a fully automatic AR15 sear or Glock switch (it just depresses the cruciform and prevents reset) at your local library or YMCA.”

      That’s the sheer *brilliance* of Scalia’s “In common use” in the Heller decision.

      “In common use” is expressly protected by the 2A. I say the next conservative president do what was done in the late 1960s when war trophy AK-47s were showing up on the street, declare an NFA amnesty period and register them!

      Make them legal by allowing people to comply by the law.

      (Now, I kinda doubt gang-bangers can pass the NFA background check, bet we can, so we can register ours! 🙂 🙂 🙂 )

      • So, you’re saying if enough people break the law, someone eventually will argue common use and then it will be legal?

        Why don’t you try it, then let everyone know so they can do it too and we’ll see how that goes.

        What a fucking moron.

        • “So, you’re saying if enough people break the law, someone eventually will argue common use and then it will be legal?”

          Free clue –

          Just how do you think marijuana being legalized became reality?

          Mass non-compliance.

          Durrrr. 😉

          “What a fucking moron.”

          Yes, you certainly are the moron, here… 🙂

        • “Just how do you think marijuana being legalized became reality?”

          State legislatures put it on the ballot and the people voted for it.

          And this was after thousands spent time in prison for breaking the law.

          And in case you didn’t know pot is still considered a class-1 drug under federal law.

          Free clue – Machine guns were legal as long as they were registered under NFA. The feds still have not legalized pot.

          And federal prison sucks, unless of course you’re Geoff he retard and want to get buttf*cked each day.

        • avatar Geoff "A day without an obsessed, obviously brain-damaged and mentally-ill demented troll (who deserves to live in New Jersey) PR

          You certainly seem to have a fascination with anal sex, as that seems to be a constantly recurring theme for you, little boy with no testicles.

          There’s no shame in it, go satisfy that urge.

          Just not with your kids, OK? Please? The poor woman you married already has enough on her hands without your sick perversions… 😉

        • If I was a little boy I wouldn’t be married. If I had no testicles I wouldn’t have kids. Nice try though. It’s difficult to come up with good insults when you are mentally handicapped.

          Says a lot that you would choose to answer this way.

          Project much? The first mention of molesting kids is from you.

          The only reoccurring theme is your stupidity and your weak- mindedness that leads you to immediately think about gay sex with small children (the only people you can match mentally and physically) when someone points out how simple minded and irrelevant you are.

          Get some help.

  9. Someone should smack Lightfoot in the mug with a “switch”. I mean she got worked over with an ugly stick. That is THE ugliest human ever. Lightfoot looks like a mutant

  10. Add blockers block adds and they give the elf bee eyes another hole to crawl through.
    Pretty soon you’ll have a rain storm of elf bee’s on your front porch and the first time you hit them with raid the whole swarms floods the hole they was si gle filing into.
    Now who’ve got a whole swarm of elf bee’s in your house and cant drink a Pepsi or sit down with out brushing the elf bee’s away or you’ll get stung.
    If you can get a elf bee smoker and put some gunny sack mixed with flower of sulphur you can smoke the elf bee’s with it and kill them.
    Believe you me, I’ve had elf bees in my house on account of the add block hole that was below the upstairs north bedroom window.

  11. One would suppose with such a gargantuan brain pan, Groot would be smarter. Only, nope.

    Bet if you grabbed her by her(?) feet and shook, she’d rattle like a maraca with only one pebble inside.

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