All In The Family

The recent shooting in Orlando has dominated the headlines for days now. Slipping under the radar was this bit of news.

56 Shot, 13 Killed During Father’s Day Weekend in Chicago

According to the Chicago Tribune, “The city recorded its 300th homicide this weekend and went on to record six others over a 60-hour period that saw 56 people shot, 13 fatally, from Friday afternoon through early Monday morning.” From Friday into Saturday alone, five people were killed and another nine were wounded.

This brings the number shot in Chicago to “about 1,800 people” year-t0-date, the Tribune reports.

Surely strict gun control laws would help reduce the violence, right?

Oh, wait...

Chicago has an “assault weapons” ban, a “violence tax,” and stringent limits on the number of gun stores allowed, as well as limits on the locations of those stores.

Gosh, maybe something else is causing all those shootings.

Perhaps it's the weather.

One Chicago criminologist, Dr. David E. Olsen, a professor at Loyola University, suggested the trend may have to do with continued warm weather patterns.

Or maybe it's the economy.

"I think it's got something to do with economics..."  

Most residents say communities continue to suffer from an economy that is nowhere strong enough to keep at-risk youths from looking for financial support in the wrong places.

Or drugs.

"All of the violence is rooted in the illegal drug economy" ... "Many guys have allowed their economic desperation to cause them to resort to these measures. The economy is terrible, especially in African-American neighborhoods."

And let's not forget police brutality.

... the recent police scandal and cover-up involving the Laquan McDonald shooting has almost certainly contributed to the spike in the numbers.

The solution? The Chosen One - barack hussein obama - of course.

(Community pastor Ira) Acree says the violence is the worst he's seen since the 1990s, and he'd like to see a state of emergency declared for wide areas of the city by President Barack Obama, who called Chicago home for so many years.

From where I sit the cause is pretty simple. Go back to Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 study titled “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.” (Please don't fall into the knee-jerk reaction of deeming it racist because of the term "Negro." That was commonly accepted back when the report was written.)

Moynihan argued that the breakdown in family structure, exemplified by the number of single parent families, had profound social consequences.

Some 40 percent of children raised by single mothers are living in poverty, according to the Census Bureau, while roughly 8 percent of children raised by married parents are poor...

Children who grow up in single-parent families are significantly more likely to exhibit behavioral problems, to drop out of school, to experience mental-health problems, to attempt suicide, and to be out of the workforce as young adults...

The family is the core character-forming institution of every human society. It is the source of the most basic order, structure, discipline, support, and loving guidance that every human being requires. It is essential to human flourishing, and its weakening puts at risk the very possibility of a society worthy of the name. It is hard to imagine how any of the social problems that take up the time and efforts of policymakers—problems of economic mobility, educational attainment, employment, inequality, and on and on—could be seriously mitigated without some significant reversal of the trends in family breakdown. These are ultimately human problems, problems of the soul, at least as much as they are economic and social problems. And the first step toward seriously taking them on must be a reinvigoration of our commitment to the family.

This is not to say that all children in single-parent families are doomed. Nor is it a condemnation of those single parents who heroically battle to raise their kids under truly daunting conditions. But it is safe to say that if the traditional family structure becomes undone, "then our society, and most especially its most vulnerable members, would be profoundly endangered."

This, IMO, is where Chicago is today ... along with Detroit, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and many other locales.

And no amount of gun control is going to fix that...