Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson spent $33 million of your tax dollars on armed police bodyguards this year.
Meanwhile, the city he was supposed to protect recorded 211 murders – more than Miami, Orlando, and Tampa combined.
That number is 211 to 29 – and you need to know exactly why Chicago’s murder rate is skyrocketing.
What Seven Layers of Gun Control Bought Chicago
Chicago didn't stumble into this position accidentally.
Illinois requires a Firearm Owners Identification card just to own a gun in your own home.
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/2087176682318819459?s=20
Then it requires a second separate document – a concealed carry permit – before you can carry for self-defense.
On top of that: a 72-hour waiting period on gun purchases, a red flag law, an "assault weapons" ban, a "high capacity" magazine ban, gun storage laws, a Glock switch ban, a bump stock ban, and ghost gun regulations.
Cook County – the county Chicago sits in – layers additional restrictions on top of all of that.
Seven layers of bureaucracy between a law-abiding Chicago resident and the ability to defend themselves.
The result: 211 murders by August and a robbery rate nearly six times higher than Miami, Orlando, and Tampa combined.
Chicago's 2,168 robberies through the same period dwarfed the combined 385 in Florida's three major cities.
Florida Tried the Opposite Approach and Won
Ron DeSantis signed constitutional carry into law on April 3, 2023, making Florida the 26th constitutional carry state in America.
Democrats screamed it would turn Florida into a war zone.
https://twitter.com/iAnonPatriot/status/2087381590305395083?s=20
What actually happened: Miami recorded its lowest homicide total in the city's history the year the law went into effect.
Jacksonville saw a 6% drop in firearm homicides.
DeSantis posted the obvious conclusion this week: "Florida has a 50 year low crime rate. When you enact law and order policies and support law enforcement, the bad guys pay the price."
Tampa recorded eleven murders in the same stretch that Chicago buried 211 people – and Tampa has more constitutional carry permit holders per capita than almost any city in America.
Brandon Johnson's Answer Was Another Department
After a Juneteenth weekend left eight people dead and 40 wounded in Chicago – including 14 victims shot at a neighborhood celebration – Mayor Johnson's response was to sign an executive order.
He created a brand new Department of Gun Violence Reduction with a $100 million annual budget.
A city facing a nearly $1 billion budget shortfall just committed $100 million to a new bureaucracy.
https://twitter.com/TexasTrump2024/status/2087324272519688541?s=20
The same mayor already canceled Chicago's ShotSpotter program – the system that detected gunshots and dispatched emergency responders – because he called it racist.
He never replaced it.
Johnson also went on record calling incarceration "racist, immoral, and unholy," meaning the repeat violent offenders driving Chicago's murder rate face a mayor philosophically opposed to locking them up.
The contrast writes itself: DeSantis trusts law-abiding Floridians to defend themselves and violent crime hits a 50-year low. Johnson disarms law-abiding Chicagoans, defunds crime detection tools, and violent criminals walk free – then blames the guns.
Democrats have been running this experiment in Chicago for decades and the results are in.
211 murders versus 29.
Seven gun control laws versus one constitutional carry bill.
A $100 million bureaucracy versus a 50-year crime low.
The data isn't close, and neither is the argument.
Sources:
- AWR Hawkins, "Report: Chicago Has More Murders in 2026 than All Major Cities in Pro-Gun Florida Combined," Breitbart, August 11, 2026.
- Ron DeSantis, post to X, August 2026.
- Larry Keane, "Chicago's Answer to The Latest Blood-Soaked Weekend," Shooting News Weekly, June 30, 2026.
- NRA-ILA, "Anti-gun Chicago Mayor Spends Astronomical Amounts of Tax Dollars on Armed Security," NRA-ILA, April 6, 2026.
- "Multiple States Witness Crime Rates Fall After Constitutional Carry," MrColionNoir.com, June 6, 2025.
- Crime Prevention Research Center, "Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States: 2024," December 2024.
