With an eye toward curbing Chicago's gun violence, mayoral candidate Gery Chico would sue Indiana and Wisconsin—and a Cabela's location in Hammond, Ind.—if they don't take action to cut access to firearms.

"We can no longer take this," he said at a recent candidates' forum at Steinmetz College Prep on the Northwest Side. "I've said, if we can't get Indiana and Wisconsin to work with us, we sue 'em, and that includes the Cabela's gun shop right in . . . Hammond, Ind."

Chico said more than 60 percent of guns recovered from crime scenes in Chicago arrive from out of state. Previous reports have attributed the largest share—19 percent—to Indiana, which allows gun owners to sell their weapons without background checks or a record of the sale.

Cabela's, a Nebraska-based sporting goods chain owned by Bass Pro Shops, did not return a call seeking comment.

Chico's remarks follow a years-old political talking point, both locally and nationally, about violence in the city and how to stop it.

Firearm advocates point to Chicago's relatively strong gun restrictions as proof of their ineffectiveness.

In a 2015 appearance before police chiefs in Chicago, then-President Barack Obama said: "There are those who criticize any gun safety reforms by pointing to my hometown as an example. The problem with that argument, as the Chicago Police Department will tell you, is that 60 percent of guns recovered in crimes come from out of state. You’ve just got to hop across the border."

At the time, a spokesman for Indiana's then-Gov. Mike Pence said, "Blaming Chicago's crime problems on Indiana is unfortunate and inaccurate."

A federal class-action suit filed here last fall said 40 percent of firearm-related crimes in Chicago involved guns imported from the suburbs. It named seven gun dealers in Riverdale, Lyons, Lincolnwood, East Dundee, Melrose Park, Lansing and Posen.

The complaint, citing a 2017 report from the Chicago Police Department and University of Chicago Crime Lab, said 90 percent of the city's 2,231 murders between January 2015 and June 2018 were gun-related.

During the Jan. 10 mayoral debate, Chico, a former mayoral chief of staff and chair of Chicago Public Schools, also called for new leadership at the police department and a return to a community policing program begun when he was at City Hall. He backed the consent decree reached with the U.S. Justice Department, adding, "We failed. Witness the fact that we have a 17 percent homicide clearance rate."

Last summer, Gov. Bruce Rauner signed a so-called red flag bill that allows temporary confiscation of guns in Illinois from people a judge determines to be dangerous. The number of states with such a law has more than doubled from the five that had one on their books prior to the Parkland, Fla., last Feb. 14.

A day earlier, Chicago Police Cmdr. Paul Bauer was killed by a handgun traced to a small shop in south-central Wisconsin.