Image 01 Image 03

Remembering Chicago’s victims

Remembering Chicago’s victims

A mass murder like Aurora, Colorado, naturally grabs the headlines and attention, as it should.  A presidential recognition of the murders is appropriate.

Yet more than twice as many people have been murdered this month in the president’s hometown of Chicago than were killed in the Aurora shooting.  They are just statistics for whom there will be no presidential visits or flags flown at half staff.

Many of their deaths were very up close and personal:

Twenty-eight stabbing deaths have been logged this year compared to 27 of these deaths last year, RedEye determined. Stabbings have accounted for about 10 percent of homicides so far this year, compared to about 6 percent last year, RedEye data shows.

Source:

DONATE

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.

Comments

TrooperJohnSmith | July 22, 2012 at 9:19 am

Yeah, on any given weekend, the Chicago street toll looks unflinchingly like what happened in Aurora. This is Chicago, home of the toughest gun laws in America.

So, is it really a “gun issue” or something else? Maybe the Left-wing, anti-gun do-gooders need to remove that log from their eye before mentioning the cinder in mine.

Also, since attacking the Constitution via the Second Amendment seems to be the most popular way to “cure” this problem, let’s expand that to the First Amendment, as well.

So, let’s ban all violent movies, TV shows, video games, music, comic books and board games. I mean, if the Joker wasn’t such a bad-ass, in your face, anti-society villain, Holmes might’ve identified with (I’ll channel the Prez, now), “a teacher or other mentor” rather than this imaginary character. I’m sure that will be as effective as anti-gun legislation.

Idiots… all of ’em.

The hopelessness and changelessness of it all.

stevewhitemd | July 22, 2012 at 9:37 am

It’s the neighborhoods on the South and West sides that have most of the problem. The Loop, tourist areas, and middle-class neighborhoods are not seeing the violence, and I think that’s the only reason why people haven’t risen up against Rahm. Our former mayor (Richie) knew that he had to keep the neighborhoods safe and the streets clear of snow if he wanted to keep his job. Rahm doesn’t seem to understand this. If we have a bad winter we’re really in for it.

Chicago also has very strict gun laws, as do most of the inner-ring suburbs. Don’t seem to be working too well, do they? Yet the response of the usual pols is that we need ‘tougher’ gun laws.

I commute into the city every day. I keep my car well-maintained; I really don’t want a breakdown on the South Side.

    TrooperJohnSmith in reply to stevewhitemd. | July 22, 2012 at 11:48 am

    But sadly, if your car breaks down in a bad neighborhood, you’re a sitting duck, right?

    Here in Houston, if I break down in a bad neighborhood, I’ll at least have a fighting chance. Moreover, since we allow concealed carry and the “castle doctrine” extends to our vehicles, the perps always have that thought in the back of their mind, That ol’ dude broke down over there might be armed! That lurking suspicion is the ultimate deterrent to street criminals who are generally inveterate cowards.

    9thDistrictNeighbor in reply to stevewhitemd. | July 22, 2012 at 12:24 pm

    I used to work at 79th and Jeffery–in the South Shore neighborhood. There are good people in that neighborhood, as in the others on the south and west sides, who want nothing more than to have this violence end. Before I accepted the job, I had called the precinct beat commander to find out if I, as a small, blonde, white woman, would have a target painted on my head. He told me that I should always leave a way out, and if necessary, I was simply to drive over the person to get out. Never had to do that, but I’m ready if I ever have to when driving on Stoney Island to get to the Skyway…”Officer Fratto told me to do it.”

    People on the south side are afraid to go to the west side, which tells you something. A lot of good Father Pfleger’s marches have done in Auburn Gresham….

    And the only time people notice is if the crime spills into Lincoln Park, DePaul, Streeterville, Walgreen’s on Michigan Avenue, etc.

    How quickly will people forget about Aurora? How quickly did you forget about the shootings at VonMaur in Omaha?

So sad. Many of them were around Travon Martin’s age and no one cares. Jesse Jackson and Obama’s hometown… and they don’t care about these kids.

Should the flags in Chicago be flown at half-staff?

Thank you for hghliting this very important point. It doesnt matter to their point tho. With them and I include the posturing media in this ,it is about the agenda. ABC would do a 20-20 on it as would they all ,if they could find a tortured link to say a T Party member gunshop. In the end it doesnt matter to Chicago. Dead or alive they vote dem. Dead ,they’re more sure to make it to the polls.

http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=142223&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Sometimes, the stupid from the average person writing in the print press is just amazing.

I have read several accounts of the Aurora killer (as a matter of policy, I don’t use his name) was “packing as many as 6000 rounds of ammunition”. Only someone who had never carried a 50 round box of pistol ammo could write something that stupid.

Dave Weigel’s piece (above) seems to hold that arming normal people does not stop violence, and points to the body armor worn in the Aurora shootings. Has he ever had someone shooting at him? It can change your mind about a lot of things. Is he aware that a middling shooter can reliably hit you in the head more often than not at common distances encountered in pistol combat?

No. Because like most people who write for the Mushroom Media, he is ignorant about a plethora of things, and apparently too lazy to learn.

    TrooperJohnSmith in reply to Ragspierre. | July 22, 2012 at 12:01 pm

    As I wrote yesterday, Holmes’ face, hands, arms, legs and buttocks were not covered by ballistic material. Many concealed handgun owners compete in combat shooting events, practice on tactical courses and spend a lot of time at the range. I think many assumptions made in original the article were unfounded.

    All it takes is one determined shooter to stop another determined shooter.

    As for the cops, on-site at the theater, the venue owners don’t want them inside the auditoriums. No. As one friend who’s a Houston cop told me last night, when they do security work at a movie theater, the owners want them out front and inside the lobbies, visible. They are primarily there as a deterrence against the congregation of young people, especially gang bangers. They are to prevent line jumping, vandalism, fights, etc. The only time they go into a theater is if there is a fight or disruption, usually due to a cell phone or someone kicking seats.

      Ragspierre in reply to TrooperJohnSmith. | July 22, 2012 at 12:17 pm

      Correct on all counts. No body armor, but a vest made of nylon. With a great big “shoot right here in the middle” gap.

      http://tacticalgear.com/blackhawk-urban-assault-vest

      But, assume arguendo, you have a man or lady who is not a good pistol shot in the extremity, but does have sense to fire from a concealed position, and can keep shooting.

      Mr. Killer HAS to concentrate on that other shooter. People can flee.

      I personally shot for the head, because of body armor (which is perfectly legal, and a big seller in kids’ sizes in some cities).

        TrooperJohnSmith in reply to Ragspierre. | July 22, 2012 at 1:43 pm

        All he has was a freakin’ Tac Vest? I should’ve known that anything that looks skeery to the average Lefty is endowed with qualities far beyond what it really posses. I heard several times that he was wearing “body armor” with a crotch protector. “Assault Weapons” and “big magazines” are also in that skeery lookin’ stuff category.

        Yeah, you hit a tactical vest with a Hydra-Shok .45, and it will just create that much more of an awful, jagged wound as the bullet expands and takes the tac vest material and anything hanging from it into the target.

        Next, look for all the mail-order places to face scrutiny, now.

        Ah, if only small, mail-order businesses could lobby like the trial loiyas.

Juba Doobai! | July 22, 2012 at 10:41 am

Barack? Jesse? Louis? Al? NBP? Bros, what y’all got to say to this?

Huh? What? Wasn’t a white boy that killed them? What’s that got to do with it? Was brothas from the hood killed them? Keep the outrage for whites?

OIC, murders only have value when you guys can make political hay out of them. Ok. Gotcha.

So why didn’t Chicaog’s strict gun control save them all?

Calypso Facto | July 22, 2012 at 10:56 am

75% of Chicago murders are committed by blacks and 22% by Hispanics (2009 Chicago Police Annual Report). Blacks turned out 96% for Obama and Hispanics 67%. Where is Brian Ross? For his type of unscrupulous journalist, there would seemingly be the opportunity to say at least 217 Chicago murderers were “tied” to the Democratic Party so far this year…

Ragspierre, 50 rounds of 9mm ammo, the LIGHTEST of the three types he was apparently carrying, weighs more than a pound. So Holmes was carrying over 120 lbs of ammo in addition to 3 guns and a full bulletproof ensemble? Highly unlikely.

    Ragspierre in reply to Calypso Facto. | July 22, 2012 at 11:14 am

    The accounts I’ve read have him with two .40 cal Glocks, so slightly heavier.

    My scale says right under 24 oz. for 50 rounds, or 1.5 #, for 9mm. Aside from the weight, you have the physical bulk, as well.

      Not only that, rags, but have you (or especially stevewhitemd) ever tried to pull rounds out of the box and fit them in the magazine? Takes a while, so any ammo he didn’t have in magazines might as well have been on Mars.

      If steve is an md I hope he knows more about medicine than he does about anything connected with guns… for his patients / victims sake.

    stevewhitemd in reply to Calypso Facto. | July 22, 2012 at 11:24 am

    Well he murdered or wounded about seven dozen people. I assume some of his shots missed. He apparently had time to re-load a couple times at least. So he was carrying a lot of ammo, whether it was 6,000 rounds or ‘only’ 1,000 is a little irrelevant. He had multiple weapons and a lot of ammo.

      Ragspierre in reply to stevewhitemd. | July 22, 2012 at 11:41 am

      “…whether it was 6,000 rounds or ‘only’ 1,000 is a little irrelevant.”

      Not to accurate, rational reporting, doc. And, not to get too far into the weeds here, but if he was firing buckshot at first, he could produce several casualties with each round, depending on a lot of variables.

        TrooperJohnSmith in reply to Ragspierre. | July 22, 2012 at 12:06 pm

        Amen on the buckshot. Double-aught in a place like that is a nightmare scenario.

        Hell, even the Geneva Convention dissuades the use of shotguns in combat. (Yeah, yeah… I know. Been there. Done that. They are ostensibly for ‘riot control’ and ‘door breaching’.) 😀

      whether it was 6,000 rounds or ‘only’ 1,000 is a little irrelevant

      I always enjoy reading your comments here, Steve, but I’d argue that getting a number that wrong is a pretty big deal.

      If the media knew that he had “lots of ammunition” but had no freaking idea how much was “lots”, that doesn’t excuse them from just pulling a number out of their collective arses and trying to pass it off as #TrueFact.

      Another of the thousand and one* ways modern “real journalists” are destroying their own credibility with the average media consumer.

      *made-up number, used for effect

http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/07/while-president-pops-in-aurora-colorado.html I linked and Senator Feinstein is now saying if more were armed in Aurora it would have costed more lives. Really?

    Ragspierre in reply to EBL. | July 22, 2012 at 12:29 pm

    Really DiFi said something that stupid, or really it would have produced more carnage?

    The guy started shooting from the front of the theater.

    Nice, clear field of fire to return fire without POSSIBLY hurting anyone. Holes in the dry-wall if you miss.

    Some of our political class…like our press…are complete flucking morons WRT anything in the real world.

    Would DiFi suggest cops not be armed?

      TrooperJohnSmith in reply to Ragspierre. | July 22, 2012 at 1:53 pm

      I read once that Feinstein carries two pistols. She carried as the Mayor of San Francisco. Like all Lefties, it’s “Do as I say and not as I do!”

      You remember that when she was Mayor of San Fran that she shot her mouth off about the Richard Ramirez investigation, which allowed his to flee town and keep on killing. The link below has video and print details of that fiasco.

      http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=82d_1234581570

      She pulled this bullsh!t, and the idiots in Cally STILL make her a Lifetime Senator For Life. 🙄

      And she gets indignant at the White House leaking secrets! Sounds like guilty conscience, to me.

I came across this claim the other day, and found it more than passing interesting.

The single highest group applying for CCP in Texas is Black women…for the last five years.

I did not research that, so it should be taken with the usual large grain of salt.

Still, very interesting, especially when you consider that Jim Crow did not like armed Black people.

Midwest Rhino | July 22, 2012 at 1:23 pm

Black Chicago youth murders are too routine and racist I suppose … but “mother murders her kids” will get a couple hours a night coverage for months. The 24 hour sensationalizing news cycles distort the real world.

“Never let a crisis go to waste” campaigning is aided by these distortions. So Obama declares a national holiday from “you didn’t build that” campaign flops, and gets to play the role of Father to a country in crisis.

But Aurora is local tragedy, not a national crisis. There are 18,000 homicides per year in the US, almost half the victims are black, who are 93% of the time killed by other blacks.

So, after months and months of lurking I finally took the plunge and registered.

Mostly because I want to say “Thank You” to Mr. Jacobson who has always been a standout as far as alert intelligent bloggers with abundant common sense goes. The attention to details, especially the smaller and more ambiguous details, to complete the entire big picture is fresh and it is direly important in this day and age. The copious flim-flam and slight-of-hand that subsists our current government and the elected officials who constitute the rabble running this country is so desperately needed. I also suspect that you’re a damn good lawyer too, Mr. Jacobson. Details are everything.

This succinct post really exemplifies those truths. It should be called out loudly and often in the ensuing Gun Control mania sure to rear its ugly head starting as soon as the Lame Stream Media finishes its weekend off after this tragedy perpetrated by a single solitary individual amongst the millions of law abiding gun owners and hobby/sport enthusiasts in America.

President Obama is going to make it a political point to promise heavy handed Gun Control laws during a ‘second term when he’s more flexible’. And, as we all know, when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns. Chicago, Barack Obama’s hometown, is proof positive.

TrooperJohnSmith | July 22, 2012 at 7:55 pm

I just read that Holmes’ Chi-Com built 100-round drum mag jammed on him. Those things are junk, and I’ve only seen one work, and that was after a full disassemble, oiling, cleaning and reworking some of the ill-fitting parts. I’m just glad he wasn’t smart enough to either use regular 30-round mags.

My point? When people call Holmes a gun-nut, this pretty much refutes that. No, he was going for the bad-ass effect. I guess his welfare check (yes, he was) didn’t allow him to buy a more expensive AK and some quality magazines. Thank goodness!

[…] about some nut in Colorado who thinks he’s the “Joker” and a gang-banger on the south side of Chicago who earns street cred by offing a couple people here and […]

[…] William Jacobson adds a little perspective. A mass murder like Aurora, Colorado, naturally grabs the headlines and attention, as it should.  A presidential recognition of the murders is appropriate. […]

BannedbytheGuardian | July 22, 2012 at 11:11 pm

Thanks Prof for this.

Yesterday I mentioned little Heaven Sutton . She has not made your list because she was gunned down on JUNE 29th 2012 in SE Chicago..

7 years old.

I cannot imagine what it is like to be /have/know a child called Heaven & to know she was assassinated .

I am very disappointed that Heaven has received so little attention. May be it is too symbolic.

Most of these people are not victims. They are involved in the drug trade somehow. The victims are the law abiding citizens who have been disarmed by the politicians. It is another method of control, as in “Vote for me and I’ll keep you safe.

[…] While Aurora gets the headlines: Yet more than twice as many people have been murdered this month in the president’s hometown of Chicago than were killed in the Aurora shooting. They are just statistics for whom there will be no presidential visits or flags flown at half staff. Posted in Crime and Violence, Media, Politics | Tags: IL […]

Add to Chicago the small town of East St Louis IL. Once a thriving city of close to 100,000 people it has now dwindled to 30,000. Murder rate of 19 per 100,000. Highest in US the article said. National average is 5 per 100,000 according to news item.

[…] they have gun control in Chicago? Via » Remembering Chicago’s victims – Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion. This entry was posted in Civil Rights, Defense. Bookmark the permalink. ← […]

[…] THE VICTIMS OF this month’s massacre in Chicago. “A mass murder like Aurora, Colorado, naturally grabs the headlines and attention, as it […]

[…] at the expense of the individual. Look at the gun control laws in Chicago another Democrat bastion. This month more than twice the number of people were killed in Chicago than were in Aurora and not a… Why is that do you suppose? The city is a militarized zone and nothing is done whatsoever to […]