St. Louis City Mayor Francis Slay and Police Chief Sam Dotson assailed the Second Amendment in a recent interview, claiming that law-abiding gun owners's access to legal firearm purchases are the driving force behind the city's high crime rate.
St. Louis City leaders and St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson believe lawmakers in Jefferson City are making it too easy for criminals in St. Louis.
“Lax gun laws in the state make it painfully easy to get a gun, carry a gun and get off on charges when someone is arrested with a gun,” Mayor Francis Slay said.
Slay has been beating this drum for a while and Dotson agrees.
“The mayor, for as long as I've been chief, has talked about an armed offender docket. The circuit attorney talks about an armed offender docket. The University of Missouri talked about an armed offender docket, yet it falls on deaf ears,” Dotson said.
City leaders said they feel isolated and ignored by Jefferson City, where gun rights advocates seem to carry the legislative agenda.
It's also important to note that both figures have participated in rallies organized by Bloomberg-funded, professional anti-Second Amendment lobbyist group Moms Demand. As a former St. Louisan who called downtown home for nearly a decade, this allegation couldn't be further from the truth. The city's unemployment rate, brought on by bad economic policy which drive opportunity from the city to every corner of the county and the criminal coddling of city and county leadership drive this. For example: In the case of Vonderrit Myers Jr., the teen killed in the Shaw shootout with police, the judge reduced his bail from $30k:
Cohen requested a bond reduction for Myers. Associate Circuit Court Judge Theresa Burke approved it, reducing the bond to $10,000. Myers was allowed to return home after paying 10 percent of that ($1,000) and with orders to wear a GPS monitoring device on his ankle.
Both times Meyers illegally possessed an illegally obtained firearm. What laws would have prevented that?
Blaming the failure of city and county leadership on gun laws and law-abiding Americans is offensive and beneath the office of the mayor and police chief.
*UPDATE: Check out STLCyclist's photos of the pair at a Bloomberg rally in downtown St. Louis a couple of years ago.
