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Guns Blamed For Chicago Violence...Again

(AP Photo/John Locher, File)

The state of Illinois has a lot of the gun control that current activists say they want. They’ve got universal background checks and even a licensing requirement prior to buying a gun. They even have a 72-hour waiting period when buying a gun.

And yet, Chicago is one of the deadliest cities in the nation.

Unsurprisingly, officials blame guns.

1,606 people were shot in a single three-month summer period in Chicago. That’s the population equivalent to many American small towns.

The violence isn’t limited to the season: A 14-year-old was shot and killed hours after a separate late September mass shooting where five were wounded.
They are numbers, and more significantly lives, that have become part of a grimly familiar dynamic in the city and one that leaders in law enforcement and public office see as “unacceptable” on the other side of an especially bloody summer.
Guns are at the center of it all.
The influx of firearms into the hands of soon to be trigger pullers is “ground zero for violence,” Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown told CNN. “It’s violent people in possession of weapons.”
From June to August this year 261 people were killed, eight fewer than the same period in 2020, but a marginal difference in a year on pace to be the deadliest in nearly a quarter century for Chicago.
According to the 2020 Uniform Crime Report released in late September by the FBI, 76% of homicides nationwide were committed with a firearm. But in Chicago, guns play an even larger role — fatal shootings accounted for 90% of all homicides last year. So far this year, they make up 94% of Chicago’s homicides.
The Chicago Police Department told CNN it is currently on pace to take over 12,000 guns off the streets this year, ranging from pistols to full-on assault rifles, which would be a record for the department.
“I think one of the things that is unique to Chicago is the over proliferation of guns on our streets,” said Kim Foxx, the State’s Attorney for Cook County, which includes Chicago and its surrounding area, and that it has been a “stubbornly unrelenting problem” for the city.

Now that just can’t be possible. I have it on good authority that gun control works and works well. How can the “proliferation of guns” be unique to Chicago?

Unsurprisingly, they blame Indiana, as per usual.

However, the examples they try to cite all involve individuals purchasing guns illegally. In other words, they’re already breaking the law, so how in the hell does anyone really think that new gun laws will somehow curb that.

Illinois has laws that are being ignored and they’re blaming Indiana’s lax gun control laws when people there are breaking the law in the first place.

The fact that anyone thinks new gun control laws are needed when the ones on the books are clearly not working is baffling, to say the least.

Unfortunately, that’s kind of how Chicago roles. They can’t deal with their own crime problem, so they decide to blame someone else so as to distract the voters from their own failures. “We’re not dropping the ball. Indiana is.”

Meanwhile, if the lack of gun control was the problem, why isn’t Indiana having the same problems?

Maybe the problem is that Chicago has many other issues at play, issues that don’t seem to exist throughout the state of Indiana? That’s something no anti-Second Amendment jihadist wants to talk about. They’re not even remotely interested in that discussion. Shocking, I know, but here we are.

Look, violent crime is a problem and we desperately need to address it, but not through legislation that impedes our constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. That doesn’t stop the criminals and only inhibits the law-abiding, degrading their ability to protect themselves.

I’d have thought they’d have at least gotten a glimpse of that fact by now, but apparently, they’re blind to reality. Why this surprises me at this point is even more shocking.

Then again, maybe I’m not so much surprised as disappointed.

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