Numbers don’t lie: Chicago just posted its deadliest Memorial Day holiday weekend since 2015, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, which keeps a running count of the dead.
According to the newspaper, 10 people were murdered over the weekend and 39 more were wounded; not the best supporting evidence for the controversial gun and ammunition tax adopted in Cook County early in the last decade. During the Memorial Day weekend of 2015, a dozen people were slain, the newspaper recalled. However, overall, murders have declined in the city since bloody 2016 when more than 770 people were killed.
As noted by Fox News, “The violence…came despite Illinois’ ongoing stay-at-home order asking residents to remain indoors “unless you work for an essential business or are doing an essential activity.”
Coincidentally, 2015 was the same year Seattle hastily adopted a carbon copy gun and ammunition tax. Over the weekend in Seattle, a double shooting killed two men in a grocery store parking lot Saturday evening, a man was fatally stabbed Sunday in North Seattle and Tuesday morning—technically no longer the holiday weekend—a woman was killed and a man injured in a shooting at a Seattle motel.
According to the Sun-Times’ “Homicide Watch,” so far this year there have been 189 homicides in the Windy City. The weather over the holiday weekend was warm, hitting the 80s, the newspaper reported. Combined with the continued “stay-at-home” order, it appears the southwest shore of Lake Michigan is in for a long, hot summer.
Last year’s Memorial Day weekend saw seven people murdered. In 2018, the newspaper reported seven also died on the holiday weekend and in both 2017 and 2016, the holiday weekend saw six murders.
Despite Second Amendment court victories, Chicago remains a city with strict gun control laws, yet those regulations have not tamed the wild South Side.
Last year saw more than 500 slayings in the city, down from the 561 reported by the Associated Press for 2018. In 2017, CNN reported 650 homicides, and that was down from the 771 killings posted in 2016, which was the deadliest year for the city in 20 years, the news network reported.
Has gun control helped in Chicago? While gun prohibition activists might say so, there would be equally compelling arguments that the advent of concealed carry in Illinois—thanks to a pair of cases including Moore v. Madigan, fought by the Second Amendment Foundation, and Shepard v. Madigan, filed by the National Rifle Association—has had some deterrent factor.
This year, July 4 falls on a Saturday. Then there is Labor Day weekend in September. In between, even as the economy is improving and life is returning to some semblance of normality, what substitutes for “normal life” in Chicago appears to be back in full swing.
