Since Friday, four Chicagoans were shot dead, and at least 31 other people have been wounded in shootings across that city. The report sounds a lot like last month (May) when there were 252 shootings.
Constant reports of mass shootings desensitize
The problem with writing about violence on the streets of Chicago is that it has desensitized many readers, same old, same old. Not since the 1920s when Giacomo “Big Jim” Colosimo ran hundreds of brothels, after solidifying power over much of the underworld during the Black Hand era, have ordinary Chicagoans been forced to live among such violence.
However, there are some major differences.
Today's shootings largely random
Colosimo, Giovanni “Papa Johnny” Torrio, Alphonse “Scarface” Capone and the like ran organizations specializing in running an underground economy from the business side of a gun. Fast-forward to 2017 and we have tens of thousands of Chicagoans leaving the city for good because former working-class neighborhoods have turned into shooting galleries for well-armed punks who kill each other and innocents for pocket change or the thrill of a mindless confrontation.
Chicago mired in pension debt, gloomy economic outlook
Yesterday, as the weather heated up, so did the perpetual cycle of violence in one of America’s largest cities – a city that ironically maintains the strictest gun-control laws imaginable.
If you didn’t steal a gun and hide it in your pants, you probably don’t own a gun in Chicago because it’s just not worth the bureaucratic hassle to carry legally. Sure, Chicago has other problems like dangerously bloated, deficit pension plans that are sucking the state of Illinois dry of cash in order to fund salaries and retirement plans for teachers, administrators, and other government workers.
Then there’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who does not even seem to realize these problems exist, even as morale within Chicago’s Police Department is so low it’s no longer measurable. And there are the questions of infrastructure, white-collar crime, and police no-go zones in the battered south-town neighborhoods. Still, it is the unorganized mindset of random violence - people running around shooting each other for little or no logical reason - that plagues the city most.
Caught up in the shootings are children who never get to live their lives because some guys driving by thought it would be a great idea to fire guns at her house over a grudge that she had nothing to do with. The most troubling aspect of drive-by shootings is that the shooters do not seem to have any conscious regret for the heinous acts they are commit.
City has become a war zone
Between Friday and Saturday in Chicago, 30 people were shot during a nine-hour period of time and the weekend wasn't nearly over. Any combat veteran from Vietnam forward will tell you that fewer soldiers were killed in the average firefight during their deployment. Chicago has, in fact, become a civilian War Zone where gang-bangers kill each other (and others) just to see them die.
Under Mayor Emanuel, Chicago has become the antithesis of a great American city.
Today's Violence is mindless and random
While Chicago’s infamous gangs of the 20s,30s, and 40s were organized for profit and often gunned down rival gang members to intimidate other mobs, the nature of today’s violence can’t be readily explained. It’s unlikely that the most vicious member of George 'Bugs' Moran's Prohibition-era gang would execute a sleeping child during an indiscriminate drive-by shooting, but that’s Chicago today.
