We are a pretty divided nation. Right now, the divisions are deep and it’s difficult to see any path forward where they don’t get deeper and deeper.

However, despite those deep divisions, there are some things that are universal. One of those is how we all acknowledge the tragedy of a child losing his or her life, especially to something as senseless as violent crime. We can unite in our grief over something like that, something like what happened in Chicago over the weekend.

A 9-year-old Chicago boy was shot and killed Friday as he played outside, generating outrage throughout the city at a time when the number of murders has nearly tripled from the previous year.

Janari Ricks was playing about 6 p.m. on Friday (July 31) at the Cabrini-Green public housing development when a gunman opened fire on a group of people behind the townhomes, CNN reports.

“He says, ‘Mom, can I come outside and play?’ and I said, ‘Sure,’” his mother, Jalisa Ford, tells CBS-Channel 2. “And when he went out, he never came back home.”

My daughter is about that age, so I don’t even want to imagine what Ford is dealing with right now. I can’t imagine her pain and suffering.

What happened is a tragedy by any measure you want to make. A nine-year-old being killed is just awful. Sure, the Cabrini-Green development has a notorious history of violence in a city that’s already violent, but that doesn’t change a damn thing about what happened.

Bad as the incident is, though, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s political narcissism may actually be just as bad.

When a 9 year old’s life is ended by a bullet, we must all be outraged. These deaths are not mere statistics. And prayers alone will not sooth a broken heart.

— Mayor Lori Lightfoot (@chicagosmayor) August 1, 2020

Gun violence is every bit a public health crisis as COVID-19.

— Mayor Lori Lightfoot (@chicagosmayor) August 1, 2020

Lightfoot, of course, is pushing her idea that gun violence in Chicago is somehow the fault of the rest of the nation. She believes that states that don’t have her city’s violence issues should enact similar laws to those in Illinois just so she doesn’t have to try and address the root causes of violent crime in her city.

To be fair, finding those root causes can be challenging and it could take years before anyone sees any results. That kind of delay could be the death of a political career, which is what this is all really about at the end of the day.

The murder of Janari Ricks is an absolute tragedy. However, if Lightfoot wants to use this as a motivating factor, she should probably focus on the things she can do. Especially since, if gun access alone were the cause of violence, we’d see much, much higher crime in neighboring Indiana than we see in Chicago itself.

I mean, hell, even the rest of Illinois isn’t as violent per capita as Chicago, all with pretty much the same gun laws in place. It’s enough to make you scratch your head if you think about it…or you already know that guns aren’t responsible for violence any more than spoons are responsible for obesity.

What’s more, I think Lightfoot knows this on some level. Oh, I don’t doubt she really believes gun control will make her city better. I just think she also knows that gun control isn’t the totality of her city’s problems, she just doesn’t want to have to step up and do the things within her power because they might not be politically popular.

Instead, it’s just easier to blame everyone else for the death of a nine-year-old boy.