“Former Chicago Alderman Ed Burke, one of the most powerful and longest-serving politicians in the Windy City, was found guilty … of racketeering, bribery and attempted extortion after a six-week-long federal corruption trial,” the New York Post reported Dec. 21. “The 79-year-old Democrat was convicted on 13 of the 14 charges leveled against him in a 2019 federal indictment accusing the veteran Chicago City Council member of using his position to steer business from private developers to his law firm.”
Pay to play is the Chicago way, and Burke’s not the first Democrat to treat his position of power as his golden ticket. Per PBS station WTTW:
For the fourth year in a row, Chicago is America’s most corrupt city, and Illinois is the third-most corrupt state, according to a new report from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
With the “Long Line of Chicago, Illinois Leaders Found Guilty of Corruption,” Al Capone’s got to be looking up from the pit and wondering what the hell he did that was so wrong — aside from his choice of gang to be part of.
And it’s not just “influencing” who gets lucrative permit deals in exchange for lining pockets – it’s also who gets placed in positions of power over the citizenry — all of us, not just useful idiot constituents self-interested and dumb enough to keep ceding power to political lampreys.
Burke was the go-between to settle a dispute between a beholden developer and an Amtrack official he considered in his debt. Again, per the Post:
“We made his daughter a judge here in Cook County. And one of their other daughters is a friend of my daughter … You’ll find out Chicago is a very small town,” Burke said in one recording.
It’s instructive to know the types of “small towners” behind the rise of the Obama machine and the types of politicians who demand our guns and tell us it’s in the name of public safety. Of which Burke was a “leader”…
“From outlawing cell phone cases shaped like guns to bans on concealed weapons in places that serve alcohol and broadening the gun offender registry in Chicago, Ald. Ed Burke’s aldermanic record has defined him as an ardent supporter of gun control,” CBS 2 News reported in 2019. “But ironically, less than a month ago, Burke made this comment at a gun buyback event with police: ‘Any of those guns that are sitting in your closet that your relative may have brought back from the First World War, Second World War, Korea, bring them in get your 100 bucks get those guns off the street.’”
Why is that “ironic”?
Because the gist of the story is recounting how 23 guns, some of them older models, were seized from Burke’s offices in a federal raid and explaining how he had exploited an 1872 law designating aldermen as “peace officers” (along with his “credentials” as a former “Only One” and private detective/security contractor) to bring guns into a government facility that prohibits private citizens, the suckers footing the bill, and especially the ones voting for him, from doing the same.
The whole outrageous episode recalls another “anti-gun” (for you, never for him) Chi-Town Alderman, Richard Mell, who, long story short, forgot to re-register his guns annually as required by an edict he helped pass, then tried to blame a staffer, pressured the Chicago Police Department’s Gun Registration Section to allow him “to re-register his guns belatedly” (and unlawfully), “quietly introduced an ordinance that would reopen gun registration in Chicago and create a 1-month amnesty,” and was able to find refuge for them at his second home in Wisconsin, just like all Chicagoans without powerful political connections and beholden financial supplicants can afford to do.
This is the “quality” of Democrat politicians dictating terms of surrender to Illinois gun owners to obey by their January 1 deadline – or else. And we’ve already seen the quality of Democrat judges and who they’re beholden to.
That is when we will find out how many Illinois gun owners have drawn their personal line in the sand, discover what enforcers crossing that line are willing to do to them and see if the Supreme Court intends to overturn an in-your-face infringement or continue to sit on its hands while citizens who won’t surrender their rights have their lives systematically destroyed by criminal tyrants.
We’re constantly being told how violent gun owners are, but they’ve so far shown themselves to be remarkably restrained, peaceably defending their rights through lawful channels. Take that away from them, and this may be a chance to find out how much pushing they’ll take — or if grasping prohibitionist overreach will trigger a chain reaction of resistance.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.