JUST IN: Anti-2A Mayor’s Texts Reveal Her True Stance On Gun Control: ‘Doesn’t Deter Violence’

St. Louis’s mayor Tishaura Jones (D) personal communications were released to the public after a successful open records request according to Fox News. Some of those thousands of texts by the mayor of the Missouri city threw into question some of her public stances. The mayor, who is a public advocate of gun control policies, was revealed to have privately admitted that “Chicago has strict gun laws as well but that doesn’t deter gun violence.” She in effect admitted that gun control does not work.

She continued in that private text to say that a better alternative policy is “investing in the people.” These private messages contradict statements the mayor made a month ago after a mass shooting. In June, Jones said that “[o]ur state’s lax gun laws make our challenge even more difficult” to crackdown and prevent such shootings.

She blamed “[t]he legislature’s lack of action on gun safety laws [that] encourages the proliferation of guns on our streets and puts our responding officers directly in harm’s way.” She also declared June 3rd as “Gun Violence Awareness Day” and advocated that the Senate “must protect our families” through “expanding background checks to all gun sales, regulating assault weapons, and passing a federal red flag law.”

Yet, this appeared to contradict other private texts by the mayor. “Newark, NJ has the same size population, same size police force, and similar racial demographics [as St. Louis], yet had 50 murders in 2022…I visited these [violence prevention] programs first hand and I know that they work. We just need the will.”

Since the public release of the mayor’s private communication, her office has been in damage-control mode. Nick Desideri, the mayor’s spokesman, claimed there was no contradiction between the mayor’s private and public stances. He said, “Gun laws are just one part of the solution…There’s a difference between deterring behavior and making it harder to get firearms and weaponry; for example, there’s no doubt that gun laws in the blue region around Newark help reduce violence as opposed to here.”

This statement by the spokesperson would not explain the mayor’s private admission that gun laws do not work in Chicago. Still, even in the private messages, the mayor complained that “[w]e have way too many guns on our streets” but observed that there is “no way to take them away.”

Desideri also shared a message from the mayor saying “I’ve never been one to hide my feelings…Through an honest mistake, text messages between my family and close friends were released to the public. Sometimes my words can be terse, and my text messages speak for themselves. I understand the impact of some of my comments, and will contact the relevant parties to ensure productive dialogue moving forward.” In effect, Desideri relayed that the mayor claims that these texts were never supposed to see the light of day and only did so because of “an honest mistake.”