Politifact: Donald Trump Is Right, ‘Thousands of Shootings’ in Chicago this Year

Following Monday’s presidential debate Politifact did a fact-check on Donald Trump’s claim that there have been “thousands of shootings” in gun-controlled Chicago this year alone. On September 27 they published the results of their check by announcing that Trump’s statement was “true.”

Trump made this statement during a portion of the debate focused on the racial divide in America. The transcript of the debate–published by The Washington Post–shows that Clinton talked about criminal justice reform and passing more gun control. Trump responded by using the example of Chicago to prove that gun control is not the solution.

He said:

We have a situation where we have our inner cities, African- Americans, Hispanics are living in he’ll because it’s so dangerous. You walk down the street, you get shot. In Chicago, they’ve had thousands of shootings, thousands since January 1st. Thousands of shootings. And I’m saying, where is this? Is this a war-torn country? What are we doing? And we have to stop the violence. We have to bring back law and order.

Politifact seized on Trump’s claim that there have been “thousands of shootings” in Chicago this year alone. They checked the Chicago Tribune–which keeps a running tally on homicides and shooting victims–and found there had been “3,210 shooting victims” between January 1 and September 26 alone. Politifact then pointed out that one shooting may have more than one victim, so thousands of shooting victims does not necessarily translate into thousands of shootings.

To solve this quandary, they turned to the Chicago Police Department which reported “2,521 shooting incidents” in the city between January 1 and September 18.

Politifact then ruled that Trump’s statement about “thousands of shootings” in Chicago is “true,” but in the course of their report they could not resist pointing out that every shooting did not result in a homicide.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.