After a weekend that saw 36 shootings in Chicago, perpetual Mayor Richard Daley has decided to equip Chicago police officers with “high-powered M4 carbines” (more commonly known as “assault weapons” when owned by civilians). Just one day after blaming the gun industry for Chicago’s crime problem, Daley said it was “not a difficult decision” to issue rifles to every police officer, making it unclear whether Daley thinks guns are the problem or the solution. Daley also failed to elaborate on how the Chicago Police Department’s new acquisitions were supposed to help citizens defend themselves in the city with America’s second-strictest gun control laws (crime-ridden Washington, DC, is first). A famous quote goes likes this: “The beatings will continue until morale improves.” Such absurd reasoning has its own parallel in Chicago, where official policy is that defenselessness will continue until crime improves. Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama supported his hometown’s draconian stance on self-defense last week when he told the Chicago Sun-Times, “There has not been any evidence that allowing people to carry a concealed weapon is going to make anybody safer.” In light of Obama’s opinion, I think he should give up his Secret Service detail, since it isn’t “going to make anybody safer” and is therefore a waste of taxpayer money.

Meanwhile, law-abiding gun owners are busy proving Obama wrong. When an angry customer pulled a gun on the manager of a grocery store on Monday in West Palm Beach, Florida, the manager and his assistant both drew their own handguns, forcing the attacker to retreat. Manager Marino Hernandez and assistant manager Robert Espinal found the criminal, 73-year-old Marshall Hugo Grant, cowering in the parking lot, where they detained him until police arrived. I am not sure how Hernandez and Espinal would have been safer without their guns, but I’m sure Barack Obama does. Leftists always know a great many things that aren’t so.