Mike Royko, liberal Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist changed gun-control stance. [View All]

[SteveM]

Royko wrote for 3 Chicago newspapers, and once had an anti-gun outlook, sparing few opportunities to lambaste the NRA and gun-owners. That is, before he changed his mind. From a critique of F. Richard Ciccone's biography of the late journalist:

http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/Books/mike-royko-life-print/

"Ciccone at least twice mentions Royko’s courageous stand in favor of gun control, but never mentions his equally courageous turnabout. Royko’s slow realization that gun control was not helpful mirrored my own. In 1993 he wrote “Anti-gun leadership keeps firing blanks” and wrote about his ambivalence towards gun control. On the one hand, “the Congress of the United States has no guts; presidents have no guts; and most of our state legislatures have no guts” when it comes to enacting gun control. But on the other hand:

'Strict gun laws are about as effective as strict drug laws. The drugs flow and so does the supply of weapons. It pains me to say this, but the NRA seems to be right: The cities and states that have the toughest gun laws have the most murder and mayhem.'

While a sea change, this was hardly a ringing endorsement for self-defense. That had to wait until 1996, when his “Women should gun for equality” looked at the utterly silly--and patronizing--arguments against women using firearms against rapists."

Nationally Syndicated Columnist Mike Royko writes (Washington Times):

"...If every woman in every big, high-crime community in America had a gun in her purse or strapped to her thigh, we would have a safer, more courteous society. ...At one time my left knee might have jerked. That was when I thought reasonable gun control laws would reduce violent crime. But I've noticed something that should be fairly obvious. With all the gun laws we have, the bad guys still have guns and use them to shoot the good guys.
... only a small percentage of violent crimes against women are committed by strangers. To a woman who awakens to see a stranger crawling through her window and heading toward her bed, he is not a small percentage. He is a 100 percent fiend. But if she had a pistol under her pillow and knew how to use it, she could make him a 100 percent corpse. And the world would be a far better place.
"...Imagine, if you will, that men were society's prime rape targets. Imagine a society in which a small and mild-mannered man could not get off a bus at night and walk down a dark city street toward his home without fearing that he would encounter a large hulk with a knife who would demand the privilege of engaging in what used to be called buggery."

"Well, I'll tell you what the result would be. Men would not ask for workshops and self-esteem counseling or wear rape whistles around their necks. They would demand the right to protect themselves, politicians would promptly respond, and it would soon be legal to pack mini-cannons in our belts..."

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Finding Royko's quotes was a quite a search, perhaps best explained by the criticism of Ciccone's omissions. Perhaps Royko had fallen from favor as a noted liberal commentator? Any-hoo, I had to pull it down from Pat Quigley's site.

http://www.paxtonquigley.com/in_the_press.html