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The criminal element worked over Labor Day weekend in the City of the Big Shoulders. Police in the gun-controlled city counted 43 people shot, eight fatally.
Depending on which newspaper one believes, between 1,400 and 1,800 people have been shot this year in Chicago, more than 300 fatally. On a brighter note, fewer people died in the hail of bullets that flew this August compared to last year.
Police have seized thousands of illegal guns to no avail.
Double Last Year’s Labor Day
“Though the city saw its lowest number of murders and shootings in August since 2011, according to data from Chicago police,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported, “the number of fatal shootings over the holiday weekend doubled the total from last year’s Labor Day weekend, when four people were killed and 23 others were wounded in citywide shootings.”
In the newspaper account, the place was described like a war zone, with cops speeding from one crime scene to another as the hurricane of lead claimed one victim after another:
The weekend’s latest fatal shooting happened Tuesday in Gresham on the South Side.
About 1:15 a.m., officers … found a 32-year-old man unresponsive with a gunshot wound to the head, police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene….
On Sunday, a 15-year-old boy was shot and killed in Austin on the West Side.
Officers … found Dovantae Jackson in the 5100 block of West Washington Boulevard with gunshot wounds to the leg and back….
He was pronounced dead on the scene, police said. He lived in the same block where he was shot.
Just over 20 minutes later, a man was killed and a woman wounded in a shooting at a party in Woodlawn on the South Side….
A 27-year-old man suffered numerous gunshot wounds to the body and was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center where he was pronounced dead, police said.
The woman, 34, was hit in the foot….
About an hour later, a drive-by claimed the life of one man and wounded another in Archer Heights on the Southwest Side.
They were traveling in a vehicle about 3:54 a.m. in the 5100 block of South Pulaski Road when someone fired shots from a passing vehicle, police said….
On Saturday, two men were killed and three more people were wounded after someone unleashed gunfire at a group of people in Englewood on the South Side.
They were on the front porch of a home about 5:51 p.m. in the 7100 block of South Paulina Street when they heard gunfire, Chicago police said.
Three others, a woman and two men, were also wounded in the shooting.
And so on and so forth. Between 5 p.m. Friday and 5 a.m. this morning, 29 others were shot in addition to the victims who appeared in the story.
The first weekend in August was another big one, with 55 were shot, seven fatally. The first weekend in June, 52 were shot, eight fatally, and over Memorial Day, it was 43 with seven dead.
Gun Laws Aren’t Working
The Sun-Times reported that 46 people were murdered in the city in August, a 23-percent drop from last year, although the number of shootings jumped 19 percent.
And the city has notched 329 murders thus far in 2019, a 14-percent drop from last year. The newspaper reported shootings at 1,425, a 12-percent decrease.
Question is, does anyone have an accurate count of shootings. The Chicago Tribune has counted 1,800 through August 26, 212 fewer than the 2,012 recorded by this time last year.
City cops are working hard to confiscate as many illegal guns as they can, the Sun-Times reported. Thus far in 2019, they’ve seized more than 7,500 and will likely confiscate more than 10,000 by the year’s end.
The shootings, versus the confiscations and gun laws, are reason Republican Senator Ted Cruz, of Texas, on seeing Breitbart’s story about the weekend death toll, tweeted, “Gun control doesn’t work. Look at Chicago.”
Disarming law-abiding citizens isn’t the answer. Stopping violent criminals — prosecuting & getting them off the street — BEFORE they commit more violent crimes is the most effective way to reduce murder rates. Let’s protect our citizens.
The city’s leftist mayor, Lori Lightfoot, tweeted her displeasure with the Texan.
60% of illegal firearms recovered in Chicago come from outside IL — mostly from states dominated by coward Republicans like you who refuse to enact commonsense gun legislation. Keep our name out of your mouth.
Lightfoot, as The New American reported in July, is also of the belief that her city’s police should protect illegal-alien criminals from deportation.
