21 Shot, 1 Dead -- in Separate Incidents in Chicago

My post was attempting to politicize a thread that is already political!?!

You better get on AQB for that too. He's the one talking about Democrats, while I merely posted a story about a child being needlessly killed.

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again: It's a shame that you guys won't just come out and say what you really mean when it comes to the Second Amendment.

 

It's where I live.

Every Monday, the papers chronicle the mayhem over the weekend.

This story is all over the local news today. One warm day, and we get 3 dead, and 17 wounded. I wonder what the numbers would have been if it was a weekend night.

 

Yeah, that's why you keep bringing it up. Because you live there.

 

I don't mean to play dumb, like Drip, but what's your point?

This -- along with the Cubs Wrigley Field situation -- is the top story here today. It's been a big story for several years now.

Crime is down in big cities like New York, yet we can't seem to get it under control.

 

Looking at these numbers, in Houston, compared to Chicago, they don't want to kill you -- they want to steal your stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_rate

Also part of the issue in Chicago: there aren't trauma centers near where most of the shootings are happening. On the south side, most are taken to Advocate Christ Hospital, where my kids were born, and about 15 blocks from my house. I can assure you that I'm not dodging bullets in this neighborhood. The problem is, the long trip to the trauma center ends up resulting in deaths that might not otherwise happen:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/15/health/trauma-centers-guns

Also, while shootings have happened outside the poorest areas of town, that's generally where they happen. The homicide rate for the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago is way above that of the wealthiest. There is generally a link between homicide rate and poverty rate (look at the usual suspects for most murders: Flint and Detroit). Unless you're going into the poorest areas of the city, your chances of getting shot are about nonexistent.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2012/07/26/concentrated-poverty-and-homicide-in-chicago

On top of that, Chicago is still dealing with the aftereffects of having knocked down a lot of its high-rise public housing. That was a shambles and needed to go, but it had the effect of causing new gang wars as the leader of the high-rise gangs tried to establish themselves in new neighborhoods.

The gun laws in Chicago "don't work" because it's well-established that it's so easy for a criminal, or a straw purchaser, to go elsewhere to get them. Indiana, which has pretty loose laws, literally straddles the border of the city.

I'm not excusing what's going on. It's deplorable. But the solution is a lot more complex than people on either side of the gun debate make it out to be.

 

My point is that you're whining about people allegedly politicizing things when the only reason you bring this up is to politicize the issue. Not that I'm sure it's not big news in Chicago, but lots of things are big news in lots of places and people don't start threads about them.

And even if your motivation was that it's "the big news," who cares? This ain't chicagoSportsJournalists.com.

 

The key to reducing violence in the city is for low-income residents to have well-off parents who can bankroll a couple of attempts to start a businesses.

 

Barring that, they should just raise the kids in orphanages.