8 dead among 52 shot across city over weekend
Thus scream the headlines of the Chicago Sun-Times. Eight people dead and 52 wounded over a single weekend in Mayor Daley's gun-free utopia of Chicago. This sounds more like an after-action report from Afghanistan or some other war zone.
So far, in 2010 there have been 206 homicides in Chicago. Statistics from the Chicago Tribune show that 81.5% of these homicides were by firearm. But get to the truth, one has to dig deeper. And the truth is ugly. It is not something that the media tells you. It gets buried as an inconvenient truth about the homicide rates in our major cities.
In Chicago this year (so far), 78.6% of the homicide victims were African-American. Just 20% were whites and the rest were other racial groups. Of the 162 African-American men killed this year, 138 (85%) were fatally shot with a firearm. While I haven't confirmed by neighborhood, prior reporting by Chicago area newspapers indicates the majority of these shootings take place in the poor neighborhoods. The ones occupied by mostly African-Americans in low wage jobs. The poor, the unskilled and uneducated. The drug users, ex-felons, the gangs.
Looking at Chicago's statistics, 48.5% of the shootings take place on the streets,, sidewalks, alleys and front residential yards of Chicago. Just 21% occur in apartments, residences or the porches & hallway of these buildings. The streets of Chicago are indeed mean.
Homicides in Chicago, like Baltimore in 2008, occur primarily in the "hot spots" for crime. The "bad neighborhoods". The police know where these places are. So do the city's politicians. Yet, because of "the numbers" and sensationalized headlines, those like Mayor Daley want to curtail the Second Amendment rights of everyone in Chicago.
The sad truth is that politicians see the homicide numbers as useful tools to demand that citizens give up more rights to the government to "solve" the homicide problem. The politicians don't care that it's mostly young, black males who are dying in war-zone-like conditions. The money used for "fighting crime" isn't directed into these areas to help reduce black male argument violence. It isn't going to the single-parent families in these troubled areas. Nor is it going to creating jobs to give some of the younger people hope of an honest life, free of gangs and crime.
Sadly, it's the same in many U.S. cities. The poor are mostly ignored and money is poured into politically favored programs by the bucket load. Counties will spend hundreds of millions to expand an airport to handle eight more flights per day. But ask for some fraction of that money to support the poor or struggling single parent and it seems there is no money to be had. That's because those crime rates are reported for the whole city. Thus, money can be justified for new police officers, equipment, courts and other government infrastructure projects.
The truth is ugly. I warned you. And I'm not specifically picking on African-American young men. But the truth is that most of the homicides in our larger cities are gang-related. The demographics might change -- one would expect more Hispanics to be involved in homicides in Salinas, California than blacks -- but the basic facts remain. Our whole concept of dealing with violent crime should change to focus on those areas where crime occurs and those who commit those crimes.
I don't have all the answers. But I do know that so-called "gun control" efforts have failed. None have lived up to their media promises to lower crime or prevent homicides. We need to a new approach to combatting violent crime.
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