Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel – mayor of a city that forbids gun ownership by the law-abiding and is spending millions in taxpayer money to try to find ways to flout the Supreme Court’s McDonald decision which expressly condemned Chicago’s handgun laws, and is “unexpectedly” in the middle of a wave of gang violence that has increased the city’s murder rate 30% at a time when the national murder rate has been dropping for years – is appealing to gang-bangers’ “values” to try to stem the flood of blood:

“We’ve got two gangbangers, one standing next to a kid. Get away from that kid. Take your stuff away to the alley. Don’t touch the children of the city of Chicago. Don’t get near them,” Emanuel — President Obama’s former chief of staff — told anchor Scott Pelley.

It’s…er…

…novel?

“And it is about values. As I said then [when a 7-year-old girl was shot and killed last month], who raised you? How were you raised?

Oh, that’s easy!  They were raised by single parents in a system that systematically devalues fatherhood – the institution that traditionally helps boys channel their natural aggression!  They were either raised by people who may have had values of their own once, but for whatever reason either couldn’t keep their kids – or grandkids – out of institutions that think summarily ending the lives of people who wear  your colors, or “disrespect” you, or who sell drugs on your gang’s drug turf, is a perfectly acceptable way to resolve issues…

…or by people who subscribed to those beliefs themselves.  And many to most of them were raised into a post-nineties ‘urban culture” that glorifies violence, especially violence that ends up in wealth, however transient, and a form of “honor killing” no less noxious than the most backward Wahhabi.

And I don’t buy this case where people say they don’t have values. They do have values. They have the wrong values. Don’t come near the kids — don’t touch them.”

Let me know if that works better than “no guns for you!” has been working out.

EIght young people were shot in Chicago in gang-related violence yesterday alone.