Police say among the injured are a 1-year old and a 7-year-old who are in critical condition.
Chicago police believe gang-related violence led to the fatal shooting of an 8-year-old girl that also left 10 others injured Saturday night in the city’s South Side.
According to police, the shooting took place near 52nd St. and South Damen Ave. at approximately 9:18 p.m. An 8-year-old girl was killed from a gunshot wound to the head, while two boys — 1 and 7 years old — were critically injured after being shot multiple times.
Deputy Police Chief Don Jerome said police aided in response efforts for the other eight victims, ranging in age from 19 to 40, by applying tourniquets and chest seals.
The victims were reportedly standing outside at a family gathering. A statement released by the Chicago Police Department said a witness saw a black sedan approach the scene when the shots rang out into the crowd. All victims were escorted to local hospitals around the area by the Chicago Fire Department.
See, here’s the problem: this is what most mass shootings look like. Most of them aren’t someone walking into a school with a rifle, it’s gang-related violence. My money would be on this crime being committed by handguns, not rifles, and those are specifically covered by 2A rights (see: Heller v. D.C., McDonald v. Chicago).
If you want to prevent this, you need to address the root issues that lead to criminal gangs in the first place. Illinois in general, and Chicago in particular has been very reticent to deal with the problems. It’s always more policing, rather than, say, more housing, more jobs, more education, more violence intervention… In fact, one of the successful violence intervention programs got axed about a decade ago (under Rahm Emmanuel, I think?), and the CPD is still the most powerful criminal gang in the city.
Most of the daily mass shootings in the US are no longer newsworthy, anyway. They are only headlines when kids or a lot of people are killed.
Instead of focusing on “Most mass-shootings are not schools but gang-related crime!”, you should focus on “How can the US get less mass shootings in general?” While mass shootings are a more-than-daily occurance in the US, they are mostly-once-a-year in other civilized countries.
We can fix most mass shootings by fixing the underlying economic issues, which also ties into racial and gender issues. Like, gang violence isn’t happening in a vacuum; you largely don’t see gang violence in middle-income neighborhoods and towns. You don’t even see that level of violence in poverty-stricken rural areas; it’s mostly when you pack masses of people together and they’re all desperately competing for the same necessary resources. Many of the “solutions” end up not being solutions at all. Take, for instance, education. The education system in the US has eroded sharply, and the trend has been to create charter and magnet schools to give parents “more choices”. But those choice reduce diversity, and leave the worst performing students behind, and also siphon money away from public schools, which further reduces education quality. Or public housing in Chicago; it was build, and then promptly packed with poverty and then allowed to fester for 40 years until conditions were so bad that they had to demolish everything.
No one wants to spend the money to fix the problem; everyone wants to pay lower taxes and then complain.
Broadly speaking, I tend to look towards a more socialist solution to the issues; higher taxes, but particularly bringing marginal tax rates back to pre-1970 levels. There’s a lot of shit that needs to be done to fix problems, and a lot of it wouldn’t be popular since people want bread and circuses rather than putting in work.
Fixing the far-right that have been using mass-shootings as a form of terrorism hoping to spark a race war is much, much more challenging, since that’s related to phantom issues rather than rooted in reality.
That’s exactly what he was saying.
Have you actually read both posts?
Gangs are not armed by a magic gun fairy. The same dogshit laws that sell semi-automatic weapons to school shooters also sell semi-automatic weapons to gang members.
But cHiCaGo HaS sTrIcT gUn CoNtRoL hOw DiD tHeY gEt GuNs???
(As though other states and illegal gun sales don’t exist.)
Looks like the roads from Gary, IN to Chicago, IL have tolls. There’s no way a gun could get in across state lines under such close scrutiny!
Seems targeted. Scary
Gun control, now
Poverty and mental illness control, now
All you’re actually saying is “people are too poor and mentally ill to indiscriminately sell guns to”.
So gun control now and when you’ve finished building your utopia where every single American is cured of every single mental health problem – a standard 100 years beyond current medical science – you can have your guns back.
We both know that even if we cleared your impossible bar, you’d have a new excuse ready for why we can’t disarm people who are domestic abusers or extremists.
How do you propose we ensure dangerously mentally ill people do not have access to guns?
Everyone is a law abiding gun owner until they’re not, so you can’t restrict access.
Then I’m not sure how ‘poverty and mental illness control’ will do anything about mass shootings.
That’s the point. It won’t stop them. Reducing poverty will certainly alleviate some. De-stigmatizing mental health problems even more. But wiping out your workplace, killing your entire family, kids shooting up schools…those aren’t usually poverty things. And the mental health aspect ties right back to what I said. They’re law abiding gun owners until they’re not - IOW you can’t do shit about taking someone’s guns away until it’s already too late thanks to the gun lobby.
Thoughts and prayers for America!
