Chicago has some of the most stringent gun controls of any city in the nation and also saw 40 of its residents shot–four of them fatally–by Sunday morning of Memorial Weekend 2016.
Gun crime in Chicago was so high in 2015 that police only investigated about 11 percent firearm-related homicides. BET reported “over 500” homicides in the city in 2015 and only “55 of them resulted in a legitimate investigation.” And homicides in 2016 are on track to equal–if not surpass–the 2015 numbers.
Viewed as a microcosm, “44 people” were shot over the entirety of Memorial Weekend 2015. Forty had already been shot with two days remaining in Memorial Weekend 2016. According to the Chicago Tribune, there were four fatalities among the shooting victims. Those fatalities include “a 15-year-girl shot to death as she rode in a Jeep on Lake Shore Drive near Fullerton Avenue.”
Chicago has instituted an “assault weapons” ban, a “violence tax”–which raises the price on every gun sold at retail–and strict limitations on the number of gun stores and the locations of those stores. Moreover, the New York Times describes Chicago handgun restrictions as being so strict they allow city leaders to “get as close as they could get legally to a ban without a ban.” But all these gun controls have correlated with a surge in gun violence rather than a reduction.
And cities like Seattle–where gun violence is raging–have followed Chicago’s lead and responded to criminal behavior by instituting more gun control for law-abiding citizens.
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.