During the opening monologue on Monday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, host Jimmy Kimmel cried over the Las Vegas attack, pushed for more gun control, bad-mouthed Republicans, but did not say a word about the number of innocents gunned down in Chicago every month.
Kimmel rightly lamented the “59 innocent” who are dead as result of the Las Vegas attack, but there was a not a peep about the nearly 59 a month on average that have been killed year-to-date in Chicago in 2017.
The Chicago Tribune reports that the current death toll for Chicago 2017 sits at 527.
Moreover, Kimmel’s monologue contained no lamentations for the more than 63 individuals who were killed on average every month in Chicago during 2016 (the Chicago Tribune reported a total of 762 murders for 2016). And nothing was said for the nearly 4,400 victims who were shot and wounded during 2016.
But Kimmel suggests Republicans ought to be ashamed for not passing more gun control now.
Chicago is a tough one for the left because all the gun control imaginable has been tried–including an all-out ban on handguns — so Chicago is actually a case study in the ineffectiveness of gun control; an example of how murder numbers rise when strict gun control laws are in place.
For example, the handgun ban was instituted from 1982 to 2010 and Breitbart News reported that the death toll was much higher during that time. Chicago Police Department reports show there were 850 homicides during 1993. That is nearly 100 more homicides in 1993 than the 762 homicides for 2016. Moreover, the Chicago Police Department shows there were 930 homicides in 1994; 921 homicides in 1991; and a startling 940 homicides in 1992. If you break these figures down by averages, it means over 78 individuals were killed every month in 1992, 70 were killed every month in 1993, and 77 were killed every month in 1994.
Where is the hand-wringing for these deaths?
We should mourn every innocent life that was taken in Las Vegas and we should be outraged at the animal who took those lives. But we should also be broken over the death that continues to mark Chicago and we should be outraged at the vestiges of gun control that continue to make the acquisition of self-defense handguns a difficult proposition.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.