This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, October 24th, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Chicago Mayor Ram Emanuel is pushing an expanded mandatory minimum prison sentence for nonviolent but illegal gun possession.

Molly Gill with families against mandatory minimums argues that mandatory minimums don't deter crime.

Mayor Emanuel has been a bit surprised by the negative reaction to his plan.

Ram Emanuel wants a new three-year mandatory minimum for those who possess guns in public places without the proper licensing.

Now public places meaning government spaces or just walking around.

Just walking around, public streets, all over the place except basically your own home.

So Chicago already has pretty strict, as far as I know, the second most strict gun laws in the country

behind Washington, D.C.

That's correct.

They do have strict gun laws and they already have one year mandatory

minimum sentences for some of this behavior. If I understand correctly, Ram Emanuel has been a little

surprised by the public reaction to a three-year mandatory minimum and Democrats generally

want to appear tougher on crime than they might otherwise naturally be

what has been the response and what has he done to respond to it?

Well, I think he has been taken aback a little bit. I think he probably went into this thinking it would be fairly easy.

Let's tell the public we're going to pass this three-year mandatory

minimum, it's going to solve all of our violent crime problems and then we'll all

go home and we'll look great in the polls and people will vote for us. And what

he's found is a lot of resistance in his own State House

that they don't want to spend all the money that this mandatory minimum is going to cost.

...