“He Grabbed a Rifle, Held It Up, and Looked Right at Me.”

“He was chuckling but there was no smile. ‘If I put this up your — ha! — your butt — ha ha! — you’ll find out how effective this is!””

That’s Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, responding to a Chicago Reader reporter’s query about whether Chicago’s gun control has been effective. (The reporter states in his story, by the way, that he’s a “supporter[] of tough gun regulations.”)

Daley’s substantive argument seems to be that gun control has been effective because seizing that gun has saved the lives of people who might have been shot with the gun. That doesn’t strike me as a terribly sound argument, for all the obvious reasons (for instance, it doesn’t consider the substitution of other guns for the seized ones, or weigh the possible benefits from the seizure against the possible costs of Chicago-style handgun bans to self-defense). But the unusual way the argument was presented by the Mayor seems to me more noteworthy here than the much more commonplace substance of the argument itself. Thanks to Ed Driscoll (guest-blogging at InstaPundit) for the pointer.

UPDATE: Here’s the video; thanks to commenter TNeloms for the pointer.

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