A lot of people think everyone should live in a large city. These people are idiots since at least someone has to live out in the country to grow our food, and then someone else has to live there to support that endeavor, but I’ve heard numerous people spout such idiocy.

Yet the truth is that there are a lot of reasons I don’t want to live in a larger urban center. Having to deal with Atlanta traffic, for example, is bad enough for the short time I’m up that way. Living in such a mess is more than I’d want to deal with on a daily basis.

Then we have crime.

Urban centers have a lot of crime. What’s more, though, they tend to elect leaders like the mayor of Milwaukee who think the issue is that we have too many rights.

Granted, he didn’t put it in just those words, but that’s the takeaway from his recent comments calling for gun control in the wake of a number of shootings in his city.

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson is again calling on the state Legislature to pass stricter gun laws after the city experienced a violent week.

At least 15 people were shot in Milwaukee on Wednesday and Thursday, according to the latest media update from the Milwaukee Police Department. A 25-year-old was also fatally shot on Wednesday afternoon and on Thursday a 1-year-old was injured in a shooting.

The incidents prompted a Thursday afternoon press conference where city leaders and officials called for an end to the violence. 

“We as a community needs to step up and say enough, enough,” Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman said during the press conference.

Johnson said the violence from a “small segment” of the city’s population has a lasting impact on the entire community. 

“It doesn’t just affect the person who was shot,” Johnson said. “Their family is affected, their kids are affected, their parents are affected, their friends and their neighbors are affected, their whole community is affected. Our city is affected by those things.”

He also said there’s a need for stricter federal and state gun laws to prevent some people from having weapons. That’s a sentiment he’s shared in the past, as city officials can’t control gun laws.

“We need stronger laws, particularly laws at the state and federal level, to circumvent that, so that we don’t see more bloodshed on the streets of Milwaukee,” Johnson said.

That may sound swell and all, but there’s just one big problem with that. The vast majority of the people doing this aren’t obtaining guns through lawful means.

Calls for gun control in the wake of shootings might have some validity–theoretically, I should add–if the bad guys were just walking into gun stores and buying firearms outright, then using them to commit these acts of violence. The truth of the matter, though, is that they’re not. We know they’re not. The ATF knows they’re not.

What’s happening is these guns are obtained by these individuals through illicit means. Gun control won’t stop them because they’re not bothering to obey the law in the first place.

As a result, should Johnson get all that he wishes for, the only thing that would happen is that law-abiding folks would have a harder time getting guns, if they can get them at all, while criminals will still be running around Milwaukee shooting people.

The reason we have violence in our urban centers is due to a combination of factors, many of which have to deal with the complete and total failure of leadership among these cities’ elected leaders. There are better ways to deal with violence than gun control, but people like Johnson like to place the blame elsewhere because it’s easier than rolling up their sleeves and getting to work solving the issues.