Like all grownups, even the least attentive, I enjoy watching the infantile games that liberals play. A current favorite is called “Race and Gender Don’t Matter” game. The rules are that candidates proclaim that their candidacy has nothing to do with the aforementioned immutable genetically inherited traits and then proceed to recite a laundry list of their supporters, neatly categorized by race, gender, ethnicity, and sexual preference.

The Super Bowl of the Race-Gender Olympics has been the ongoing back and forth between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, with color (no, not that kind of color!) commentators breathlessly predicting who will get the “female vote,” and who the “African-American” vote. That’s “vote,” singular. I guess that proves that don’t view their voters as members of groups. Instead, they view them as so incapable of individual thought that each racial, ethnic or gender category may as well be one voting entity.

Ordinarily I recoil against this sort of group-think, but in the spirit of the currently fashionable bipartisanship, as we approach the Illinois primary, I want to address this column to the voters of Cook County, but especially the female voters.

You need to pay attention, ladies.

If you doubt that, I have it on no less authority than Oprah herself. On a recent show, the Oprah discussed “The Gift of Fear,” a book that explains that we women often ignore our gut instincts at our peril. So, even if that charming guy you just started dating raises more red flags in your head than you’d see at a May Day rally in Havana, you tell yourself everything is terrific, which it is, until everything breaks bad, and you wake up in your own bed at 3 a.m. with Mr. Wonderful standing over you with a knife at your throat.

Fortunately, the woman in question in this story, who lived to tell it on “Oprah,” was able to escape. But Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and her two daughters Haley, 11 and Michaela, 17, were not so lucky last summer. After two vicious criminals broke into their Cheshire, Connecticut home, held them hostage and forced Jennifer, a 48 year-old nurse, to withdraw cash from her bank, they strangled her, tied the girls to their beds and set the house on fire. The girls died of smoke inhalation. Bill Petit, Jennifer’s husband of 22 years, had been severely beaten and tied up in the basement, but managed to survive.

Original news reports said that police had “rushed” to the scene, but on January 24, 2008, ABC News reported that while the two scumbags were terrorizing this family, a police officer was nearby for at least 30 minutes. The officer was forbidden to approach the house while the department decided where to set up the appropriate perimeter and otherwise comply with department policy, which apparently doesn’t include making sure innocent women and children don’t get murdered while the cops try to figure out what to do.

Coincidentally, on the same day that I read that learned that the Petit tragedy might have been prevented, I checked the status of the scheme being cooked up by two Cook county commissioners to disarm nearly all law-abiding citizens in the county, leaving us in the same situation as Jennifer Hawke-Petit. I know that it isn’t exactly breaking news that liberal Democrats want to turn self-reliant Americans into cowering supplicants, dependent on them for everything from health care to their very lives, but I never cease to be amazed by the arrogance of people like Cook County Commissioners Larry Suffredin (D-13) and William Beavers (D-4).

Suffredin is running for Cook county state’s attorney. From his commercials, you’d think his primary qualification for the job is that he’s tall and that he’s a “reformer,” as confirmed by that well-known reformer Jesse Jackson, Jr., who appears in one of . Suffredin’s ads. While he does mention that the NRA opposes him, he fails to mention why. I can say it simply: he is an enemy of freedom, a man who is contemptuous of the 2nd amendment, a demagogue who hopes to appeal to well-intentioned but uninformed voters who don’t realize that in a country where 48 states permit law-abiding citizens to own and carry firearms, it is gun grabbers like Suffredin who are, to borrow a favorite liberal phrase, “out of the mainstream.”

Beavers no doubt discovered the crime-preventing value of gun control by his experience on the south side of Chicago/ His , ill-conceived, dangerous ordinance has the deceptive and Orwellian name “The Safe Streets/Weapons Registration Act.” has nothing to do with safe streets and very little to do with registration of guns. It is in itself an affront to freedom.

One section requires registration “of all firearms in accordance with the provisions of this division.” Another prohibits registration of “ handguns, except “those validly registered to a current owner in the county prior to the effective date of this ordinance, and which contain each of the following——a safety mechanism to hinder the use of the handgun by unauthorized users. Such devices shall include, but shall not be limited to, trigger locks, combination handle locks, and solenoid use-limitation devices; and a load indicator device that provides reasonable warning to potential users such that even users unfamiliar with the weapon would be forewarned and would understand the nature of the warning.”’

Wait—what just happened?

What appeared to be an egregious gun-registration plan turned into gun confiscation. How? Unless your gun has the “load indicator,” which most don’t because no half-way intelligent gun owner would use to determine whether a firearm is loaded. Thus absent this, Beavers’ ordinance requires you to surrender it to your liberal betters. Suffredin’s racket is entitled the “Cook County Deadly Weapons Dealer Control Ordinance.” It would prohibit a gun shop from being located within 10 miles of another gun shop or within one mile of a school. Apparently democrats handwringing over lost jobs extends only to union auto workers or anyone who blames their unemployment on Wal-Mart. Law-abiding, small business owners and their employees’ jobs must be sacrificed at the altar of liberal fascism.

Not only are these ordinances bad public policy, and at odds with the U.S. Constitution, they probably violate the Illinois Constitution because home-rule municipalities have their own ordinances, which take priority over those of any county. (Art. VII, Sec. 6, Illinois State Constitution). Even those who aren’t concerned about 2nd d amendment rights should ask themselves “do we really want to elect someone as the chief law enforcement official of the county who, at best does not know the law, or more likely, is willing to promote unconstitutional legislation when he perceives that it will be politically expedient?”

Good question. Beavers has apparently withdrawn the legislation. As we know liberals are relentless in their determination to control every aspect of our lives, so don’t be surprised if the legislation returns when he thinks he can sneak it in under the radar. Suffredin’s has been tabled until after the February 5 primary, after which he thinks he can safely proceed with his machinations. That’s something to think about when you cast your vote.

That episode of “Oprah” about women defending themselves against violent criminals had a take-home lesson. It is this: when confronting a dangerous miscreant who wants to do us harm, we need to listen to that little voice in our heads. Our intuition is a powerful weapon. I think that’s good advice, but personally, as a woman, I’d also like to have another weapon, one that fits nicely in my hand—one that would give me a fighting chance against someone who wants to rape or kill me.

Regardless of what Suffredin,, Beavers and any other cabal of conniving politicians think is best for me, I want to exercise my God-given right to choose that weapon.

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Teri O’Brien is a lawyer and talk show host who writes occasionally for The Chicago Daily Observer.