Scores of People Shot as Chicago Experiences Its Most Bloody Weekend of the Year
This summer’s crime wave began in early in Chicago, with as many as 52 people shot over the weekend.
The violence resulted in as many as 10 fatalities and saw more than 30 victims shot over a 12-hour time span late Friday night into Saturday morning, according to Fox News.
The Chicago Tribune reported that the list of victims included a number of minors, with the youngest being a 16-year-old boy whose name was not released. They were not among the dead.
The weekend managed to surpass even the longer Memorial Day weekend as the most violent of 2019 — a year that has now seen 956 shootings.
Memorial Day had also been riddled with shootings — resulting in 41 gun-related hospitalizations and seven deaths, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
With this weekend accounted for, Chicago sits just 116 victims shy of last year’s final total, and the city is on track to surpass even the 2016 total — a whopping 1,573.
Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson responded in a Monday news conference, saying that the shootings should remind everyone of the “complex and profound challenges” that the city, and newly elected Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration, face, according to CBS News.
Johnson also said that the department had recognized several patterns in the shootings, suggesting that a number were “gang-related.”
“As a result, we huddled as a team and implemented increased patrols in areas where we expected to see possible retaliation,” Johnson said. “These initiatives resulted in a significant number of guns being take off the city streets — 92 since Friday.”
“Nearly double the amount of guns that we take in during a particular weekend,” Johnson added.
Johnson said the increased patrol efforts — which resulted in the confiscation of 92 illegal firearms — would significantly improve safety in the affected areas, and that the response “speaks to the commitment of our police officers to safeguard our neighborhoods.”
But the past few weekends of mass gun violence in Chicago were not lost on popular pro-gun, conservative figures and social media users.
Many such figures have since argued that the immense amount of gun violence in Chicago these past few years is direct evidence of what they have been saying all along: That communities with gun-free zones and stringent gun control are far less safe than those where law-abiding citizens can exercise their Second Amendment rights.
Horrific. Intensely strict gun laws in Chicago, yet here we are. https://t.co/xBDVjpUlg4
— Amanda Prestigiacomo (@AmandaPresto) June 3, 2019
In the last week in Chicago:
Shot & Killed: 19
Shot & Wounded: 72
Total Shot: 91
Total Homicides: 22Chicago has the strictest gun laws in America
Chicago has not had a Republican mayor since 1931
Democrats own the destruction of America’s once great city
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) June 3, 2019
“Chicago has the strictest gun laws in America. Chicago has not had a Republican mayor since 1931,” Turning Point USA founder executive director Charlie Kirk wrote on Twitter Monday, decrying Chicago’s left-wing leadership and gun control policy.
“Democrats own the destruction of America’s once great city.”
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