Violent Easter weekend in Chicago leaves 8 dead, 44 injured
Easter weekend proved to be a violent time with gang related shooting being blamed for a headline grabbing death toll. Since Friday evening, at least eight people were shot and killed in Chicago, and at least 44 others were wounded, police said
“This doesn’t wipe out what has happened over the last two years, and this is a conversation that we’ve had time and time again,” Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said Monday morning. “There’s no magic formula here. We have a plan, we have a strategy, and it’s hard work. That’s what it is. … It’s a day-by-day, minute-by-minute grind, and we’re into busy season. That’s what it is.”
The superintendent said the vast majority of shootings in Chicago are gang-related, and detectives were working to determine “which of the hot conflicts” were to blame for the most recent spate of violence.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel said addressing the violence isn’t just about what the police do but what the schools, community groups and parents do to instill values in their children.
“You can’t do this just by discussing how many police we have and counting heads. You can’t do this by figuring out many kids are in after school. We have to do all of that and more and we all know we have tough budgets,” said Emanuel.
CBS noted that murders in Chicago rose to 516 in 2012, only the second time homicides surpassed 500 since 2003. Then in 2013, the number dropped to 415, the lowest murder total for Chicago in nearly 50 years.
The CBS coverage some of the crimes, but it was second weekend in a row at least 36 people were shot in Chicago.
photo JRLibby
It is odd how the regimes in Chicago, Detroit, Washington DC and San Francisco still cling to the failed policies of Orwellian gun control as a means to end violence. The rest of the country long ago accepted that gun control was a failure, and as early as 1991 initiated the reforms necessary for law abiding citizens to defend themselves. While violent crime continues to rise in the gun control [m]eccas of Chicago, Detroit, Washington DC and San Francisco, the complete opposite is happening in the rest of the country. According to the Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice /Bureau of Justice Statistics, and the FBI Uniform Crime Report, there are fewer and declining violent crimes and fewer and declining gun accidents where there are fewer gun restrictions and more law abiding citizens who bear arms, both at home and in public. After almost a quarter century of these successful reforms, the relationship between correlation and causation is becoming more and more obvious, and more difficult to ignore.