SPRINGFIELD, Ill., Feb. 13, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following was released today by the Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA):

Law-abiding Illinois firearm owners can expect to take it on the chin Friday as Obama brings his gun control road show to the windy city.  Ostensibly, Obama will be in town to plead for an end to Chicago's record wave of violent crime.  In reality, Obama will settle in to the friendly confines of Hyde Park to deliver an ultimatum to lawful firearm owners – give up your guns or else.

In making his plea, Obama will be sure to employ all sorts of half-truths and flowery euphemisms to push his case for domestic disarmament.  When Obama talks about "gun safety" he really means "gun bans."  When speaking of "weapons of war," Obama will be talking about 85% of the firearms in Illinoisans' gun safes.  In Obama's book, "responsible gun owners" are those who will dutifully march down to the local police station to surrender their firearms.

What Obama won't be talking about are police reports which show that about 88% of Chicago's murderers are previous offenders.  Likewise Obama probably won't point out that only about 30% of Chicago's murder cases ever result in a conviction.  Certainly, we won't hear Obama admit that the recent headline-grabbing murder of a Chicago teen came at the hands of a pair of gangbangers who have persistently slipped through the fingers of the Illinois justice system.

No, Obama's Friday message will be the divisive assertion that free exercise of the 2^nd Amendment by suburbanites is the root of Chicago's problems with violent crime.

Rather than attacking firearm owners this Friday, Obama needs to be telling Judges to start locking up violent criminals rather then releasing them to our streets.  Obama needs to tell teachers to spend less time counting their days until retirement and more time teaching their students to count to ten. Obama needs to admonish parents to act like parents rather than acting like "BFFs."

Obama could really do the city a favor by pulling a page from his own playbook.  When GM was about to fail, Obama basically fired the CEO of GM.  What Obama needs to do Friday is to pull Mayor Emanuel aside and tell him to replace Chicago Police Chief McCarty with someone competent enough to handle the job.

The ISRA is the state's leading advocate of safe, lawful and responsible firearms ownership. For more than a century, the ISRA has represented the interests of millions of law-abiding Illinois firearm owners.

WEB SITE: http://www.isra.org

SOURCE Illinois State Rifle Association