Roy Exum
Between the Christmas parade massacre in Wisconsin and the unfathomable school shooting by a 15-year-old in Michigan, what might be America’s greater horror continues to gnaw on Chicago like a vicious cancer. With a month remaining in the year, Cook County, Ill., has recorded over 1,000 homicides in 2021. Not just that; a whopping 81 percent of the murdered have been black and another 15 percent are Latino. Yes, that leaves only four percent of the dead are white/other.
It is the most murders in Cook County in the past 30 years.
Within the city limits, somebody is shot by somebody else every one hour and 58 minutes. That’s right, as of yesterday afternoon there have been 4,280 people shot this year and someone murdered (797 in the city) every 10 hours, 9 minutes. What is astounding is that Chicago has the strictest gun laws in the nation. Almost as astounding is nobody is doing much about this full-fledged catastrophe.
There is a very active website called HeyJackass.com that uses reports from the Chicago Police Department and the Medical Examiner's office to keep tabs on an up-to-the-minutes basis:
* -- THIS WEEK (11/28 thru Dec. 4) Shot & Killed: 11; Shot & Wounded: 52; Total Shot: 63; Total Homicides: 11. Just this Friday, 11 were shot and four are dead. It is absolutely a shooting gallery. The ambulances have huge letters on their sides “Call 1-800-Got Shot”) and the hospitals struggle to keep up with the endless deluge.
In November, thru Tuesday of this week, there were 63 killed and 257 shot. Take a look at this detailed report:
* -- 59 shot & killed
* -- 4 stabbed
* -- 1 shot by police
* -- 1 Off-duty police officer fatally shot
* -- 7 homicide-linked arrests
* -- A person shot every 2 hours, 17 minutes
* -- A homicide every 11 hours 26 minutes
* -- 3 homicide-free days
* -- 56 males killed vs 7 females
* -- 53 Blacks, 8 Hispanics, 2 White/Other
* -- 2 children 12 and younger shot, 0 fatally
* -- 48 teenagers shot, 8 fatally
* -- Homicide age range: 14-60
* -- Team Garfield Park led w/ 29 shot, 3 fatally
* -- 11th District led w/ 40 shot, 7 fatally
* -- Expressway shootings: 9 shot, 2 fatally
* -- Thanksgiving Day: 32 shot, 13 fatally
* -- 15 grazed
* -- 2 selfies
* -- 9 #ShotInTheAss
All of this, in just last month! It’s a national tragedy and the Biden White House is worried about vaccinations? These are Americans being shot and killed and I’m betting 257 people in Chicago last month didn’t die of the COVID flu. Before dawn on Nov. 8, the 4,000th person was shot for the year. It is widely known Chicago is poorly run and that the state of Illinois has its problems. But I can name no other city, outside of Portland maybe, that has a worse reputation than The Windy City.
It is obvious gun control doesn’t work – there are hundreds of thousands of “bad guns” available everywhere in the United States. Anyone who would shoot another person isn’t going to have a ‘carry permit’ and, with thugs like Waukesha Christmas Parade killer Darrell Brooks easily being back on the streets to ram into revelers, the Court system is far too lax. (Darrell Brooks, a career criminal, is charged with killing five people and injuring nearly 50 after plowing through a Christmas parade with his SUV on Nov. 21 in Waukesha, Wis.)
Then there are “good guns,” bought by all the rules, that fall into the hands of a greatly disturbed 15-year-old. He takes the 9 mm semi-automatic to Oxford High School, allegedly gets a text from his equally disturbed mother telling him, ‘Don’t do it” and goes on a wild-eyed spree that leaves four classmates dead and another seven shot. When you figure out how to stop Ethan Crumbley – a child – maybe some of the same will apply to Chicago.
To sit quietly while over 800 blacks are dead from black-on-black gunfire in 2021 is unacceptable in any city. It must be stopped.
royexum@aol.com