Rahm Emanuel – thanks, in all likelihood, to suppression of the Laquan McDonald video – is in his second term as Mayor of Chicago. And gun crime in Chicago has gotten worse, not better.
How can that be? Doesn’t Chicago have strict gun control laws? Isn’t Rahm Emanuel an advocate for those laws, and for even stricter ones?
Y’know, this just might create the impression that gun control laws – i.e. restrictions on who can legally own guns and how they can legally be carried/used – might not be the answer to Chicago’s gun crime.
Excerpted from article in today’s Chicago Tribune:
Confronted with the bloodiest weekend in Chicago since being named police superintendent six weeks ago, Eddie Johnson on Monday called the gun violence “completely unacceptable” and said the dozens of shootings highlight “the uphill battle” confronting police.
More than 50 people were shot, eight fatally, between Friday afternoon and early Monday, the city’s most violent weekend since the end of September, according to a Tribune analysis.
The tally included a 3 1/2-hour period early Saturday when one man was killed and 14 others were wounded — the equivalent of someone being shot every 14 minutes.
Chicago is already closing in on 200 homicides as the city endures its worst violence since the late 1990s. At this rate, the city is on pace to top 500 homicides for the year for only the second time since 2008.
At an unrelated news conference Monday on the city’s Southwest Side, Johnson brought up the Mother’s Day weekend violence himself in his prepared remarks. He focused his remarks on how much of the bloodshed is being driven by about 1,300 individuals on the Police Department’s “strategic subject list” — those believed to be most prone to violence as a victim or offender.
About 78 percent of the homicide victims and about 84 percent of the nonfatal shooting victims this weekend were on the list, he said.
“That means essentially we know who they are,” he told reporters at 50th Street and South Karlov Avenue, where a Chicago police officer fatally shot a bank robbery suspect on Monday. “Oftentimes, they have gang affiliations, and many have had previous arrests and convictions.”
Wow. The newly named Police Superintendent of Chicago says the current rate of gun violence is “unacceptable”.
There you go. That should settle things. Thank God for Eddie Johnson. The decent Black people of South Side Chicago can rest easy again, right?
Of course not.
Let’s talk honestly here – which is more than either Mayor Emanuel or Superintendent Johnson will:
-Chicago gun crime is a scourge of the entire city. But its greatest victims are Black citizens who live in the areas literally controlled by gangs — and they’re not by any means restricted to the South Side.
-If the police superintendent KNOWS who they are, what is he doing to STOP them?
-How many more people have to be killed? How many more parents have to fear for their children’s lives every time they step outside on the street?
-How many more stores have to be closed and shuttered because no one in his/her right mind would open a store in neighborhoods with this kind of crime?
-How many more schools have to operate as juvie facilities instead of institutes of learning, thus dooming the children there right out of the starting gate?
The people running Chicago, from the Mayor on down, are doing virtually NOTHING about this.
And, regarding gun crime, proposing/passing stricter gun control laws, arguably is doing less than nothing, because it not only has no effect on the gun crime rampant in Chicago, but cons at least some people into believing Mayor Emanuel and his equally phony pals are addressing the problem – which they very definitely are not.
Who is to blame here? Frankly, the first line of blame belongs to Chicago’s citizenry itself.
That is because the citizens of Chicago have voted in one-party government – not just this time around, but for decades.
-The last Republican Mayor of Chicago left office in 1931 – that’s 85 years ago.
-Chicago just elected one Republican City Councilperson….out of 50. I can’t find who the last one was, but it was a long time ago….and even this one, Anthony Napolitano, only won because he is a political “progressive” and had the support of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU): in other words, he might as well be a Democrat anyway.
Between 1972 and 1999, 26 current or former Chicago aldermen were convicted for official corruption. Between 1973 and 2012, 31 aldermen were convicted of corruption. Approximately 100 aldermen served in that period, which is a conviction rate of about one-third.
Chicagoans: you elected one party government, and you elected a bunch of scoundrels within the party. So if you have any complaints, I don’t want to hear them.
Maybe if Chicago became a two-party city, maybe if there were more than just one philosophy of governance there, things would be different – including the approach to gun crime. I don’t know.
But I sure as bleep know how things are without it.
That’s something to think about, folks.
Or, you can just leave things as they are, then sit back and watch your streets continue to be shooting galleries, listen to your elected and appointed officials complain that it is “unacceptable”, watch them propose new laws that do NOT address it….
….and keep voting them in anyway.
Your choice.
It is almost as if these leaders want there to be more gun crime so they can go all the way and ban guns.