Da Mare

For 13 years I lived in Chicago. Well, sort of. A down-state Illinois person will tell you that anyone living north of I-80 lives in Chicago--including Bolingbrook and Lemont.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley exerts a profound influence on Illinois politics. He is virulently anti-gun (in private hands), which is why Illinois and Wisconsin are the only two states that have no provision in law for private carrying of concealed handguns.

Someone as politically successful as Daley doesn't promote a public policy unless it resonates with his constituents. I've often wondered why his anti-gun stance gets him so many votes. Here are two complementary possibilities:

1. White people remember the 1960s militant Black movements with fear and loathing. The Black Panther party of Huey Newton and Bobby Seale scared a lot of white people at the time, with their ostentations display of weaponry in public. Violence between the Chicago Police Department and the Black Panthers came to a head in 1969 when Panthers Mark Clark and Fred Hampton were both killed in a police raid (In which five of the officers present were African American) by Sergeant James Davis, an African American officer. Daley's strong anti-gun stance is reassuring to whites who lived through that time.
2. Many black people in Chicago live in urban ghettos, where drug gangs battle over sales turf and co-opt children into a life of crime and addiction. These battles routinely leave young black men dead on the street. Daley's strong anti-gun stance is perceived by his black constituents as a way to keep those armed gangs under control.

In both cases, Daley's perceived message is simply "help me (the State) preserve my (its) monopoly on the implements of force and violence, and you will be safer." The underlying assumptions may vary, but the overt theme is the same.