Windy City Blues

Monday I commented on the foolishness of Chicago's head cop blaming the violence in his city on lax gun laws. He made that claim despite the fact that Chicago has some of the most stringent gun control laws in the country. I suggested that perhaps the problem stems from a breakdown of family and societal values.

It turns out others are thinking along those same lines.

For the second year running, Chicago saw a spate of violence over the long holiday weekend that would generate headlines if it happened in Kabul.

... This year, the tally of shame was more than 80 people shot and 14 killed. Last year, a slightly longer July Fourth weekend (the holiday fell on a Thursday) saw 75 people shot and 12 fatalities.

Why is Chicago the nation’s murder capital? Its officials always want to talk about gun laws, and Superintendent McCarthy complained about their laxity after the latest shootings. This is bizarre, since Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, and has been slapped down in the courts for trampling on the Second Amendment in its zeal to make it all but impossible to own guns.

Chicago is a running illustration of the cliché that if you ban guns, only criminals will own them. Not surprisingly, if you are willing to shoot someone in a meaningless gang dispute, you are willing to disregard laws for the purchase and possession of firearms.

Now let's venture into territory that makes many people uncomfortable, starting with the victims.

Nearly all of those killed were black or Hispanic men age 35 or younger.

Taking that a step further:

... the rate of nonfatal gunshot injury in Chicago was 46.5 per 100,000 from 2006 to 2012. But it was only 1.62 per 100,000 for whites. For blacks, it was 112.83 per 100,000. For black males, 239.77, and for black males aged 18–34, 599.65, or “a staggering one in 200.”

Furthermore, the vast majority of the violence occurs in readily identifiable neighborhoods with distinct socioeconomic factors...

In places like West Englewood, South Shore and Austin, gunshots seemed almost as common as fireworks this past weekend.

... and is committed by a similarly identifiable cohort.

... the shootings overwhelmingly occur among a small network of criminal offenders. One of the alleged shooters over the weekend has 21 prior arrests.

Back to my point regarding the breakdown of family and societal values:

Chicago is grappling with the profound social breakdown of certain neighborhoods, where the two-parent family has been obliterated and where, too often, young men consider lawlessness the norm. It is here, as Heather Mac Donald of City Journal writes, that gang members define themselves not by “family, or academic accomplishments or interests, but ruthless fealty to small, otherwise indistinguishable, pieces of territory.”

This breakdown is “the root cause,” to use that old catchphrase, of Chicago’s violence. It blights the lives of countless young men, hundreds of whom end up in the morgue every year. You would think that trying to find ways to combat it would be an obsession of liberals who profess to care about the welfare of our cities, but all their energy is devoted to income inequality, global warming, and other fashionable causes.

Those 'other fashionable causes' also include blaming inanimate objects - tools; lumps of metal and polymer - that cannot act on their own, rather than the failed progressive policies that have eradicated the traditional American family structure, doomed generations of minority kids to poor public education and dismal employment possibilities, and left them hopeless and adrift.