In one day, 20 shot in Chicago - Officials blame the weather, we blame the officials

According to the Chicago Tribune’s May 1 edition:

“At least three people were killed and 17 wounded in shootings across Chicago overnight as the city saw its warmest weather in seven months.” See article

In the past, Chicago’s Chief of Police Garry McCarty, has blamed warm weather for his city’s gun violence, along with pointing the finger of blame at Sarah Palin and “government sponsored racism.”

By using this metric, if the weather keeps heating up we can expect more gun violence to erupt on the streets of Chicago. Where’s Al Gore?

According to the Tribune article, “warm weather” is behind the outbreak of  gun violence, not the  lack of  enforcement of some of the toughest anti gun laws in the United States.

Checking statistics in different countries known for their warm weather and violence, the following stats were observed:

In Afghanistan for the entire month of April a total of 17 coalition force personnel were killed, see report

In a recent 5 day period in all of Iraq, a total of 25 civilians and police were killed, see report.

Chicago, one of our nation’s biggest cities outpaced the violence in 2 war torn countries.

Instead of pointing the finger of blame at outside forces, perhaps it’s time for the people of Chicago to point the finger of blame at their leaders.

Not long ago, NRA’s President Wayne LaPierre noted Chicago had the nation’s toughest gun laws, yet was failing to enforce them.  He noted that if federal gun laws already on the books were enforced, instead of putting even more restrictions on gun legal ownership, it could help solve the city’s violence problems. See story

La Pierre had also called on federal officials to bring in forces to patrol Chicago’s streets in order to restore order: “We need a federal task force, if it takes 500 agents; if it takes a thousand agents, go into Chicago."

The law abiding citizens of Chicago deserve to have safer streets and adding more laws to the over 9,000 gun laws already on the books isn’t going to make any difference.

Chicago’s violence is not due to the weather, the NRA or Sarah Palin, it’s due to the lack of will by city officials to enforce the law.