A tweet by Donald Trump threatening to “send in the feds” if Chicago cannot get a handle on the raging violence in the city has a lot of people on edge. What they don’t remember is that there is a way for the feds to knock down a high murder rate.

It’s called Project Exile, and it worked in Richmond, Virginia. Even The New York Times, no friend of the Second Amendment, covered how it succeeded. It worked by simply having federal prosecutors enforce quite non-controversial gun laws, like being a felon in possession of a firearm, using a gun in a drug-related or violent crime, and so on.

Here’s one case in point: Melvin Douglas Smith had been a terror on the streets of Richmond, being arrested multiple times on all sorts of charges. Until one day, early in Project Exile, when he was pulled over, and a cop saw crack cocaine, a sawed-off shotgun, and a 9mm handgun. Smith was caught in a slam-dunk case and received a 16-year sentence in a federal prison. Smith’s problems were only beginning. Once he had been sentenced, witnesses came forward — eventually, Smith was charged with six murders.

It’s a safe bet that Chicago’s deadly streets are that way because all too often, gangs rule the streets of this Democrat-run urban poverty plantation, and cops, afraid of being second-guessed by bureaucrats who rarely, if ever, leave the safety of a cubicle in DC, pull their punches. But Project Exile just simply needs ATF agents who can be at the jail, and a few federal prosecutors who want to rack up a lot of easy convictions.

The biggest problem with this Trump tweet is that he only mentioned Chicago.