Chicago homicides total 42 for 2013 so far, including Hadiya Pendleton, 15, murdered in Chicago days after marching with her school band at President Obama's inauguration. If last year's record repeats itself, Hadiya's murder will likely go unsolved.
In 2012, Chicago racked up 506 murders (elsewhere reported as 513), making the city America's murder capital. Disturbingly, only 25 percent of the murders were solved, as reported by dnainfo.com. One of the biggest difficulties in solving violent crimes is "a pervasive 'no-snitch code,'" according to Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. Most of the murders are committed by "teenage boys and young men."
Despite the fact that most of the homicides take place in areas where "joblessness and poverty seem entrenched," Mayor Rahm Emanuel is doubling down on efforts to reduce guns, even though Chicago already "has in place byzantine restrictions on handgun ownership," as reported by Yahoo News. The Mayor has been focusing on pressuring companies to stop investing with gun manufacturers. This is another example of punishing law-abiding citizens for the unlawful actions of the criminals.
The problem is not guns. If most of the crime takes place in "the neighborhoods with the highest rates of unemployment, school dropouts, teenage pregnancies, HIV/AIDs infections, and other public-health problems..." as stated by Arthur Lurigio, a criminal justice professor at Loyola University in Chicago, then that is where the focus should lie.
The excessive number of Chicago homicides can be traced to cultural problems that more gun control will not likely solve.
It hasn't so far.
Photo Source: AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast via newpittsburghcourieronline
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Comments: 9
America needs to change the way we raise our children. We need to stop making pop culture and the media our gods and go back to a time when parents actually did parenting. A time of Faith, morality, integrity and honesty. We need to move away from movies where people are maniacally murdered and video games that make killing, or robbing and flaunting authority a sport . Not to mention music that glorifies rape and cop killing.
Change the root cause and you will change the outcome. Of course we've spent a couple generation digging this hole and it may take a couple to make a reasonable change.
IMO, the first place to find the answer is in God. If you think about it, this escalation in violence and "rampage shooting" stuff seems to coincide with Americans systematically removing God from their lives. Slowly but surely God has been driven out of this country over the last 30 years and what fills the void is the evil of the day.
Love thy neighbor.....
Gun control in any form is like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. In the long term, gun control should be tied to licensing, testing and registration with a term limit of renewel like an auto tag. (Although I doubt that version will fly) But getting back to the basics of parenting there is a serious, and unforgivable disease in the black, and hispanic communities of most urban neighborhoods where poverty is the norm, as well as unemployment, school dropouts, and parents that just don't give a damn, or lack the means to raise their children.
Without job skills, or education kids are faced with few choices to survive, and thrive, Street gangs soon replace the family that once was, and violence and crime becomes the only means of support.
You are correct.....
"A federal judge in Chicago held a hearing Tuesday for two reputed lieutenants from one of Mexico's most powerful drug cartels who are accused of playing key roles in an alleged $1 billion conspiracy to traffic drugs in Chicago and other U.S. cities."
"Daily turf battles over drugs and distribution, he said, are turning parts of this Midwest city into a Mexican border town." "One of the hardest jobs I've had in the past couple of years is to convince our law enforcement partners that we need an enforcement mentality as if we're on the border," Riley said.
"We now know the Sinaloa Cartel is not just Mexico’s problem; the cartel has found a home in Chicago."
The city may be nearly 2,000 miles from Mexico, but the country’s drug cartels are so deeply embedded in Chicago that local and federal law enforcement are forced to operate as if they are “on the border,†according to Jack Riley, special agent in charge for the Chicago Field Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
and a bonus!
"They're back. A radical Islamist group critics say has links to Al Qaeda is gearing up to host its second annual U.S. recruiting event.
The group, Hizb ut-Tahrir America, which is committed to establishing a caliphate, or international Islamic empire, kicked up controversy in Chicago last year with its first U.S. conference, “Fall of Capitalism & Rise of Islam.â€
The answer to the question is self evident.
Kennesaw did something quite unusual in 1982. They unanimously passed an ordinance requiring each head of household to own and maintain a gun.