OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
11:45 AM – Wednesday, September 3, 2025
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson leads the city with the highest number of homicides in the country each year, but he has rejected the Trump administration’s offer to deploy federal forces to combat violent crime.
Following his military takeover of Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump floated the idea of sending troops to other large cities to lower crime rates across the country. Last month, Trump suggested that Chicago, Illinois, would be the next city his administration would “straighten out.”
“What the President is proposing would be the most flagrant violation of our Constitution in the 21st Century. The City of Chicago does not need a military occupation,” Johnson wrote on X in response at the time.
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Over Labor Day weekend, at least 54 people were shot in 37 incidents in Chicago, with eight shootings being fatal. According to AP News, most cases ended “with no suspect in custody.”
The president responded to the harrowing numbers on Tuesday in a Truth Social post: “I will solve the crime problem fast, just like I did in D.C. Chicago will be safe again, and soon.”
Trump also confirmed his intentions while speaking to reporters at the White House on Tuesday.
“We’re going in,” he affirmed.
“This isn’t a political thing, I have an obligation,” he added, “when 20 people are killed over the last two-and-a-half weeks and 75 are shot with bullets.” Trump went on to tout his efforts in Washington, D.C..
Now, the mayor of Chicago has new ideas about what might solve his city’s crime problem. During a press conference on Tuesday, he said that the real reason for the high violent crime in Chicago is that Republican-controlled states have more access to guns.
“There are measures that the federal government can take right now to help continue to drive down violence and crime in our city,” Johnson announced. “We need the federal government to stop the endless flow of guns into our state and into our city.”
The mayor praised the city police for taking thousands of guns off the streets of The Windy City, but claimed that “the vast majority of guns do not come from Chicago.”
“They are not made in Cook County. They are not bought in the state of Illinois. These guns come from red states,” Johnson asserted.
He specifically called out Indiana, Louisiana and Mississippi as the states responsible for producing and selling the guns that are confiscated in apprehensions in Illinois.
Johnson said that his idea of guns in Illinois coming from nearby red states was “the harsh reality, whether Republicans like it or not. Occupying our city will do nothing to solve this problem.”
He continued, “None of it will ever be enough until the president decides to end the mass trafficking of guns.”
He concluded by saying, “Chicago will continue to have a violence problem as long as red states continue to have a gun problem.”
The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) recently reported that in 2023, the top sourced state for firearms recovered in Illinois was Illinois, with 9,147 weapons recovered that traced back to the same state. The second state on the list was Indiana, which was the source of 2,796 firearms recovered in Illinois.
Johnson’s assertion that the guns used in Chicago crimes were obtained illegally also confirms what supporters of gun control would never admit—the gun laws were already in place, and the firearms were still stolen or illegally purchased.
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