Earlier this week we heard of
another tragic argument for hearings
on gun violence in Chicago.
While sitting in a Chicago park
with a group of volleyball teammates
on Tuesday, a 15 year old girl named
Hadiya Pendleton was shot and
killed.
Police said Hadiya, an honor
student, was likely caught in the
middle of gang turf wars. She was
not affiliated with a gang herself.
Chances are, we might not even
have heard of this sad event if
Hadiya hadn’t performed with her
high school band last week as part
of President Obama’s inauguration
festivities.
We might not have heard about it
because, tragically, what happened
to this innocent girl in Chicago is
much too common.
Chicago has had at least 44
homicides already this year. Three
days before Hadiya’s murder,
seven people were killed in Chicago
within 24 hours, the youngest a
16 year old boy. The mother of one
of those shot had
already lost her three other
children to gun violence.
Last year, 7 year old Heaven
Sutton was caught in a shooting and
killed as she was
selling candy and snow cones on
the street outside her home.
In Chicago alone,
more than 270 children have been
killed since 2007. That’s almost 3
Newtowns per year in Chicago. Just
the children.
Nationwide, a quarter of all
gang-related killings
strike children under the age of
18.
As I reported in this
newsletter a few weeks ago, more
than 500 people were killed in
Chicago last year. That’s more than
the number of coalition soldiers
killed in Afghanistan in 2012.
In President Obama’s remarks on
new gun control legislation in
January, he pledged funding for
“scientific or medical research into
the causes of gun violence,”
arguing, “We don’t benefit from
ignorance. We don’t benefit from not
knowing the science of this epidemic
of violence.”
It may come as a surprise to
President Obama, but the cause of
the “epidemic” in places like
Chicago with high gun violence is
not a mystery.
It’s gangs.
Chicago police estimate that
roughly
80 percent of homicides in
Chicago are gang-related.
Approximately 100,000 gang
members roam the streets of that
city, spread among a few dozen gangs
which engage in near-constant
battle. They outnumber police
officers 10 to 1.
Although the problem is worst in
Chicago, the murder capital of the
U.S., gang violence is a growing
threat nationwide. The FBI
estimated in 2011 that there are
roughly 1.4 million active gang
members in the U.S., a 40 percent
increase from 2009.
They are responsible for “an
average of 48 percent of violent
crime in most jurisdictions, and
much higher in others.”
This carnage is contributing to
astonishing murder rates for black
Americans especially. Only 13
percent of the U.S. population is
black, but this group accounts for
half all homicide victims. The
homicide victimization rate for
black males ages 18-24 is 19 times
the national average.
But while gangs affect some
populations disproportionately, they
in fact show broad ethnic and racial
variation.
There are Asian gangs, East
African gangs, West African gangs,
Caribbean gangs, Latin American
gangs, Eastern European gangs, and
white supremacist gangs.
Many are highly sophisticated
criminal organizations.
Some work closely with Latin
American drug cartels.
The
FBI National Gang Threat Assessment
reports gangs have established
“wide-reaching drug networks;
assisting in the smuggling of drugs,
weapons, and illegal immigrants,”
and increasingly engage in “alien
smuggling, human trafficking, and
prostitution” as well as
“white-collar crime such as
counterfeiting, identity theft, and
mortgage fraud.”
Nearly all gang related
homicides involve guns -- mostly
handguns.
The FBI reports that “typically
firearms are acquired through
illegal purchases; straw purchases
via surrogates or middle-men, and
thefts from individuals, vehicles,
residences and commercial
establishments.”
This suggests new gun laws are
very unlikely to stop the flow of
guns to gangs.
An eye-opening piece in Chicago
Magazine last year detailed
how local politicians protect and
use the city’s gangs as their own
personal political armies. The
article described how elected
officials and candidates for local
office appeared before panels of
gang representatives to answer the
question “What can you give me?”
“The politicians, most eager to
please, replied, ‘What do you
want?’”
The story describes how the
city’s politicians tip off gangs to
police raids, help get members out
of jail when they’re arrested, get
records expunged, actively fight
measures like surveillance cameras
designed to curb gang activity, and
even participate in the gangs’
profitable narcotics business.
This gives you some idea of how
serious many Chicago politicians,
with all their gun laws, are about
stopping the gun violence.
In an interview on Telemundo this
week, President Obama was asked
about the 15 year old honor student,
Hadiya.
The host, Jose Diaz Balart, said,
“Back home, specifically in your
hometown of Chicago, yesterday
15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton was
shot dead in a park. She was here in
Washington to take part in your
inaugural. Chicago has one of the
strictest gun control laws,
certainly in the state and across
the country. Doesn’t this in a way
give credence to the NRA’s point
that more laws don’t necessarily
equate to less gun violence?”
The President, who spent much of
his adult life as a politician in
Chicago, immediately replied: “Well,
the problem is is that a huge
proportion of those guns come in
from outside Chicago...If you are
just creating a bunch of pockets of
gun laws without having...a unified,
integrated system...it’s gonna be a
lot harder for� an individual
communitty, a single community, to
protect itself from this kind of gun
violence.”
No mention of the gangs that
killed Hadiya, that commit 80
percent of homicides in Chicago,
that manage some of the nation’s
most sophisticated black market
networks for drugs, prostitution,
human trafficking, and indeed, guns.
How can President Obama, who has
seen this calamity and corruption
with his own eyes, have the heart to
suggest that background checks and a
toothless weapons ban have much at
all to do with stopping tragedies
like Hadiya’s?
Your Friend,
Newt
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