The city of Chicago is kind of the poster child for violent urban environments. It’s not the most violent, necessarily, but it’s right up there with some of the worst. It’s also very visible in a very anti-gun environment.

After all, while Chicago doesn’t have much gun control to speak of specific to the city itself, the state of Illinois has all the anti-Second Amendment laws we’re told are absolutely essential in controlling violent crime.

In fact, they’ve worked so well in the Windy City that 2021 has gone down as the deadliest year in a while.

The year of 2021 ended as one of the most violent on record in Chicago, as a rise in the number of shootings left more people dead than in any single year in a quarter century, according to statistics released by the police department on Saturday.

According to the department, 2021 ended with 797 homicides. That is 25 more than were recorded 2020, 299 more than in 2019 and the most since 1996. And there were 3,561 shooting incidents in 2021, which is just over 300 more than were recorded in 2020 and a staggering 1,415 more shooting incidents than were recorded in the city in 2019.

Other cities have also seen an increase in the number of homicides. But Chicago, as it has in previous years, ended 2021 with more homicides than any other city in the United States, including New York and Los Angeles, both of which had recorded at least 300 fewer homicides than Chicago for the year as of late December, according to police data from those cities.

“We all know this has been a challenging year here in the city of Chicago,” Police Superintendent David Brown told reporters at a news conference earlier this week. “Too many families are reeling from the loss of (loved) ones due to senseless gun violence.”

Brown credited gang violence with the lion’s share of the homicides, which isn’t overly surprising.

However, we’ve been told that the laws on the books in Illinois are essential in preventing this kind of thing. Clearly, that’s a load of bull.

Officials in Chicago like to credit less restrictive gun control laws in other states like Indiana with their problems, but the truth of the matter is that Chicago has a gang problem. If you address that, you don’t have much of a violence problem.

Meanwhile, gun control makes it more difficult for the good guys to go out and secure the means to defend themselves. People have a right to keep and bear arms and in the Chicago area, they have a need to do so, but the state has made it far more difficult than it should be.

Because while much of the problem is gang violence, it’s not just gang members getting shot. Good people are being hurt as well.

If it were just gang members killing each other off, I doubt I’d be able to muster all that much sympathy, truth be told. They chose that lifestyle, so they get everything that comes with it and they get it good and hard.

But good people get hurt, too.

Those are often good people who aren’t armed because the law makes it too onerous. That needs to change.