When your town has the volume and reputation for gun crime that Chicago has worked so hard to earn, people tend to take a closer look at what happens there. And no one examines Chicago violent crime like heyjackass.com. They do impressive work slicing and dicing the Windy City’s crime stats.
From looking at their numbers for 2018, we learn that the number of Chicago’s homicides declined again to 588 in 2018 from its 2016 peak.
And of those, “only” 495 people succumbed to gunshot wounds last year.
The good news is that Chicago’s experience reflects that of cities across the nation, where…
…the murder rate fell by almost 6 percent between 2017 and 2018 in the 30 largest U.S. cities. Violent crime overall dropped by about 2.7 percent in cities where data was available, while the overall crime rate declined 1.8 percent.
One law abiding Chicagoan who fortunately wasn’t part of HeyJackass’s homicide statistic was an unidentified concealed carrier who was in the city’s Logan Square neighborhood on New Year’s Eve when two armed hold-up men got out of a car.
At 9:40 p.m., a 29-year-old man was standing on a sidewalk in the 2900 block of West Cortland Street when two armed males got out of a silver Nissan, according to Chicago police. They announced a robbery, resulting in the 29-year-old shooting both of them.
Another successful defensive gun use brought to you, despite the city of Chicago’s best efforts, by the Heller and McDonald decisions and your Second Amendment rights.
So Chicago rang out 2018 with a bang. Again. And this time, for once, it was a good guy with a legally carried gun who was doing the shooting.