Christmas Weekend in Chicago: At Least 27 Shot, 7 Dead

The city with some of the strictest gun control laws in the country saw its alarming number of shooting deaths and injuries climb even higher over Christmas weekend, during which time at least 27 people were shot, 7 dying from their wounds.

“At least 27 people were shot, seven fatally, in a 48-hour period in Chicago over Christmas weekend, according to the Chicago Police Department. It was the latest bloody chapter in a city besieged by gun violence,” the New York Times reports.

According to the Chicago Tribune’s running count, the weekend’s violence makes a total of 4,306 shooting victims in Chicago in 2016 — a stunning 44 percent increase over the 2,989 from last year.

Despite gun control laws that are among the strictest in the nation, gun violence in the city has surged to nearly unprecedented rates under the leadership of embattled Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The major reason for the violence, as the Times notes: gangs, “whose disagreements range from neighborhood turf wars to disputes over girlfriends.”

The Times highlights one particular victim of the weekend’s gang wars: an 18-year-old man shot in the neck and back while driving through the Southwest Side’s Gage Park neighborhood at around 1:30 a.m. Christmas morning.

The death toll from the weekend makes 763 homicides in Chicago this year, a 55 percent increase over the 492 homicides in 2015. (For more details, see the Chicago Tribune’s running count of homicides in Chicago.)

As the Daily Wire reported in August, despite the Left’s focus on “black lives,” they continue to downplay or outright ignore the greatest threat to young black males: gang violence, which is particularly strong in Democrat-controlled inner cities, like Chicago:

A new report from the Injury Prevention and Research Center in Chicago found some stunning, though not surprising, trends in the homicide rate in the city. Over the last decade, the per capita homicide rate has risen slightly overall, but among African-Americans, the rate has skyrocketed. 

The study found the overall homicide rate of 17.3 homicides per 100,000 residents in 2005 had ticked up a little to 18.8 homicides in 2015. Among whites, the rate had actually declined over that time to 2.7, while there was a small increase among Hispanics to 11.3 homicides per year. Among African Americans, however, the rates by 2015 had risen to a stunning 46.5 per 100,000 and had climbed almost 10 times as much as the overall rate. That increase has occurred despite an overall decrease in the city’s black population.  …

The worst hit are young African-Americans, the most likely to be involved in gangs, which plague many black neighborhoods in the city. In 2015, the homicide rate of 20 to 24-year-olds across all racial groups was 64.3 per 100,000. From 2009 to 2012, Chicago saw a 25% increase in gang activity, with an estimated 100,000 gang members as compared to the city’s 12,000 police officers (see graphic below via ABC News).

More from the Daily Wire on Chicago gun violence.

H/T Jazz Shaw