Chicago Mayor Imposes New Rules on City’s Purchase of Guns and Ammunition

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is once again doing the bidding of his buddies in the gun control lobby. The mayor has already teamed up with anti-gun groups to sue Glock in an attempt to block the sale of the popular handguns in the state of Illinois, and last month signed an executive order creating an Office of Gun Violence Prevention. 

Now Johnson has signed off on another executive order, this one aimed at any firearm or ammunition company that wants to do business with the city. 

he executive order is designed to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent only on firearm vendors that demonstrate strong legal compliance and responsible business practices. Gun violence prevention advocates say the measure uses the city’s purchasing power to hold firearm manufacturers and vendors to higher standards of accountability.

Brady United, a national nonprofit focused on preventing gun violence, estimates taxpayers spend more than $5 billion each year on law enforcement firearms and ammunition.

What they’re saying:

Rev. Ciera Bates-Chamberlain, executive director of Live Free Illinois, said the order is intended to ensure public funds are not used to support firearm vendors with harmful business practices.

“Too many families in Chicago know the cost of an industry that has too often operated without enough accountability,” Bates-Chamberlain said in a statement. “This executive order sends a clear message: public dollars should never reward harmful business practices. Live Free Illinois is proud to stand with Brady United and our partners as Chicago shows what it looks like to lead with courage, use every tool available, and turn procurement into a strategy for public safety.”

As of publication of this story the text of the mayor’s executive order isn’t available on the city’s website, but based on the vague language used and the ties to Brady, my guess is that it will rely heavily on this paper from Brady titled “Preventing Gun Violence Through the Power of Procurement.” 

That paper, in turn, heavily promoted an executive order signed by Phil Murphy when he was governor of New Jersey. The meat of that executive order reads: 

For retail dealers of firearms, that such dealers have policies to prevent, detect, and screen for the transfer of firearms to straw purchasers or firearm traffickers; to prevent sales to prohibited individuals; to protect against the theft of firearms and ammunition; to train vendor employees and have reasonable employment policies designed to ensure maximum compliance with the law; to assist law enforcement in the investigation and prevention of criminal access to guns; and to promote public safety.

b. For manufacturers of firearms, that such manufacturers have standards for retail dealers authorized to sell the company’s firearms that induce those dealers to adopt policies to prevent, detect, and screen for the transfer of firearms to straw purchasers or firearm traffickers; to prevent sales to prohibited individuals; to protect against the theft of firearms and ammunition; to train vendor employees and have reasonable employment policies designed to ensure maximum compliance with the law; to assist law enforcement in the investigation and prevention of criminal access to guns; and to promote public safety. 

Some anti-gun activists have pushed for even more restrictive language that would preclude companies that offer semi-automatic, centerfire rifles to the public from getting government contracts. 

Will Johnson’s executive order go that far, or will it look more like Murphy’s EO? Frankly, the order that Murphy signed is more window dressing and virtue signaling than any kind of substantive constraint on companies looking to do business with the state. 

In either case, Johnson’s latest move is yet another example of the far-left mayor blaming gun manufacturers for the actions of violent criminals. Instead of targeting the firearms industry, the mayor should rescind his support for criminal justice “reforms” like the SAFE-T Act that are putting violent offenders back on the street after they’ve served just a fraction of the time they were sentenced to. 

A man with a long, violent criminal history who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for attacking a 94-year-old woman during a home invasion in 2016, but was released after serving less than half of that sentence, is now accused of attacking and robbing two more women in their 60s on the Northwest Side.

Olajuwon Claiborne, a 36-year-old whose tattoos include one stretched across his chest reading, “I can do all things through Christ,” is charged with two counts of robbery of a victim older than 60, aggravated battery causing great bodily harm, and unlawful possession of a credit card.

… Claiborne was paroled on June 6, 2025, after serving time for a string of violent robberies that included the violent home invasion of a 94-year-old World War II veteran. Prosecutors said Claiborne followed the woman to her home in the 5100 block of South Long Avenue in December 2016, beat her, stole her purse, and escaped in a stolen car. Police arrested him two days later.

… Under Illinois sentencing laws, Claiborne’s sentences would be reduced by 50% with good behavior, making him eligible for release after serving 10 years. However, Illinois Department of Corrections records show he was paroled after about 8 1/2 years, well short of that mark. It was not immediately clear what additional sentence credits allowed his earlier release.

Before the 2016 cases, Claiborne had already been convicted of two armed robberies in 2009 and theft from person in 2014.

I don’t have to see the text of Johnson’s latest executive order to know that it’s nothing more than pandering to the gun control lobby, not a serious attempt to reduce violent crime in Chicago. Johnson’s public safety strategy is a joke, or at least it would be if it didn’t seriously threaten the exercise of our Second Amendment rights and make the city a more dangerous place at the same time. 

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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