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Chicago violent weekend gang violence dead wounded crime

Chicago’s non-stop violent crime keeps mortuary services and hospitals busy. Among the customers this weekend: 58-year-old anti-gun, anti-violence “activist” Willie Cooper.

At one point in a wild weekend in Rahm’s Wild West, thirty people fell to (mostly gang-related) gunfire, nine fatally, in the span of 18 hours. Contrast that with 54 percent of American counties that didn’t see so much as a single homicide in 2014.

The Chicago Tribune has the story of Mr. Cooper’s mid-afternoon death.

A 58-year-old husband, father and community activist was shot dead Saturday afternoon — less than a block from the anti-violence organization where he worked on the South Side (Ed: pictured above), his family and police said.

Willie Cooper was walking in the 100 block of West 95th Street when a dark-colored vehicle approached and someone inside fired, hitting Cooper in the mouth and torso about 4:15 p.m. Saturday, police and family members said.

He was pronounced dead at 4:28 p.m., there in the Princeton Park neighborhood, according to police.

Cooper’s body lay outside a liquor store, less than a block away from where he worked, at Lilydale Outreach, according to his wife, Sherry Clark. Clark, 44, stood nearby with other family members.

Police found twenty shell casings near his body — a big clue that someone (or someones) wanted him dead. And that his killer(s) had terrible marksmanship skills; he was hit twice.

Mr. Cooper’s death will likely remain unsolved; 84.3 percent of other homicides in the Windy City never generate an arrest, never mind a conviction.

Homicides this past week spiked 50 percent higher than the previous week.  At the same time, the total number of perforated persons fell slightly. Proving once more that shot placement trumps caliber size.

All the while, Chicago’s gang violence problems continue to grow. Just last week, Cook County announced the layoff of 17 of its prosecutors. That’s right:  the Democrats in charge decided to slash the number of prosecutors as violence spirals out of control.

The Cook County Public Defender’s office was ordered to slash 63 of 430 public defenders as well. What could possibly go wrong? I mean, that hasn’t gone wrong already?

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181 COMMENTS

    • People in Rahm’s neighborhood are not being shot, it’s the poor black and hispanic people on the south and west side. Until people Rahm cares about start to get shot, Rahm will not do a thing.

      • You’re wrong about the Tiny Dancer©neighborhood…Rahm”s kid was beat up a scant block away when his pot dealer got violent. And the Gold Coast is violent and murders are occurring. NO safe-space in Chiraq…

      • you can see why the former prez did not go back home…no respect for community organizers …or maybe he is more aware of what is really going on after all his crazy policies have been put in place…good for me… but not for the people! OBAMA…..one big a*s mistake America…..Socialism tried and true mistake or is it more for me…the pres….less for u … you think people would see the writing on the wall….oh I am sorry… yes public education…they can not read…..but sure can pull a trigger…let’s hope they do not learn how to aim…50 percent increase will go out the window…no limit to devastation ….

    • What Willie Cooper didn’t understand is that it ain’t the guns causing all the violence in the Windy City, it’s the low-lifes that inhabit it. His death is yet another example of how foolish thinking can be fatal if left untreated.

    • The only real way to end this is the execution of Rahm and his henchmen. As long as they remain in power to control the police and rule like a dictator it will be killings as usual! A recall won’t work. He will ensure that! With him taken out, the governor may have to declare martial law for a period of time until elections can be held and a new administration put into place. There will have to be a mandatory round up of violent felons, gang members and other illegals to take a majority of the criminal element off the streets. The right to carry should be reinstated for all law abiding citizens that choose to do so.

  1. For as long as this mayhem has been going on in Chitcago you’d think they’d have run out of gangstas by now. Of course, the real ‘old school’ gangsters there hang out in city hall.

    • I had an interesting talk to a CPD officer this weekend. Once you realize that CPD is basically the bully boys of the Mayor’s office, things make a lot more sense.

    • I read a report once that Chicago has something like 72,000 gangsters on the street, which is more troops than the Taliban has in all of Afghanistan.

    • Unfortunately the politicians and criminals have perfected the systemic problem over the years.

      Easy formula:

      Step 1:
      Introduce welfare

      Step 2:
      Introduce fatherless families

      Step 3:
      Women crank out babies

      Step 4:
      Indoctrination / recruit youth into the criminal lifestyle.

      Rinse and repeat for those democratic votes and threaten them with no welfare if they refuse.

        • Actually, no. Blacks consistently had more stable families than their white counter-parts from their emancipation at the end of the Civil War right up until LBJ quite literally bought their votes with welfare in the 60s. THAT is when single-parenthood really began to spiral out of control in that demographic.

          Sadly, now white folks are following suit with an increasing percentage of illegitimate kids/single-mom households with every passing generation.

        • You could have left “in that demographic” out of that sentence, and it would have still been accurate. White illegitimacy rates lag behind black and hispanic rates, but they have all been moving in the same direction since LBJ’s “Great Society.”

          Turns out incentivizing having illegitimate children causes people to have illegitimate children.

  2. Ironic? Nah…THIS was obviously a HIT. Dude pizzed off the wrong banger. There is NO safe space in Chiraq…

  3. “Nearly 40 people have been laid off from the Cook County State’s Attorney Office, including 17 prosecutors.”

    Yeah, that sound you hear are the thugs cheering wildly.

    Get out of that shit state while you can, people…

      • “Apparently, judging from results, these bozos weren’t doing diddly squat anyhow.”

        Maybe Chiraq is adapting the “less guns, less crime” meme to law: “the less law, the less need for law enforcement”

  4. I don’t think “pop tax” is a typo. A tax on sodas was about to go into effect earlier this month but implementation was delayed via legal challenge.

      • deletions been goin’ on here some lately.
        to your point, the delay of the penny an ounce drimk tax has the county board president and the states attorney crying broke. hence the layoffs.
        to geoffpr above: the last hope is that things get so much worse that some of these dipwads will wake up and punt a few of these leaches.

        nah.

        • I notice that the layoffs, as is normal for Democrats, look to be done in such a way to punish the public (in this case, as done by the courts).
          Not much cutting done to those people/projects liked by the upper crust.
          Just how much was cut to the local arts projects?

  5. Can anyone provide a comparison of the mayor’s net worth on the day he took office with today? Wanna guess?

  6. The 84.3% unsolved murder rate isn’t hard to believe since about 85% of homicides are criminals killing other criminals. Witnesses aren’t coming forward out fear and cops would rather focus their efforts on murder victims that didn’t have it coming. I once read a famous homicide detective’s 3 ways to prevent becoming a murder victim: 1-Don’t do drugs or associate with sellers or users; 2- Don’t be at a bar at closing time; and 3- Don’t marry a sociopath/psychopath.

  7. Farcical… There are no walls around South Side, why do law abiding people still live there? Can’t folks work or collect welfare checks in another part of town or in a different city/county? What makes the people who live there put up with violence? I guess people are just different.

    • The high-risk, high crime areas tend to have depressed rent rates ( and depressed tenants) and so the lower income populations congregate there and make themselves victims. And their children future gang-bangers.

      For some people ( not being judgmental) the risk:benefit calculation is not as obvious as it is to others. A slightly higher rent for a better neighborhood should be easily offset by less theft, robbery, burglary, medical and funeral bills, but these points are never addressed by the neighborhood do-gooders. Even programs to help these people defend themselves and their homes, when implemented, are useless because so long as you remain in the neighborhood you WILL NOT survive shooting a gangster in self defense, nor testifying in court against one of theirs.

      The only reasonable solution is to get out and that is the solution that is so seldom offered.

      • Hordes of the shitbirds have been coming to Eastern Iowa for years.. To get their Section 8 voucher then back to the cesspool. A revolving door. THEY ARE NOT WANTED/NEEDED..

        A late Obumer project declared the Eastern 1/2 of Iowa to be part of the Chicago metro area and communities had to take and keep the refuse.

    • I’ve never understood that myself. Bus tickets aren’t that expensive, and when you don’t own or pay rent, there isn’t much holding you to a place that is awful. They have public housing in Vermont.

      • We don’t have ANY “public housing” here where I live. Very little welfare, and no gangs. We have one County Attorney, and he has a full time private practice because there’s almost nothing for him to do for the county… The last crime wave here was a gas drive off and a DUI stop in the same day. Can’t remember if they were both the same guy, but it might have been.

        People here don’t tolerate city crap, and pretty near everyone is armed and ready to defend themselves.

        I wonder if there is a connection…

      • Where are they going to go? They will just start up another nest when they get there. Police Chief in SC, he happened to be black, came out to visit the section 8 property where I was the maint. man. The property was in the middle of town, something about helping improve their quality of living. The Chief told me, they are born here, they will die here. It’s the only home they know.

        • My point is that it isn’t hard to get out of a violent place and go to another. A client of mine who takes Section 8 tenants also has tenants who aren’t Section 8 recipients. Not all Section 8 housing is just that.

          The Brookings Institution is considered at most a centrist organization. Some consider it to be on the left. They say that there are only three things required to have a 98% chance of not being in “poverty” and a nearly 75% chance of being in the middle class. Those three things are “at least finish high school, get a full-time job and wait until age 21 to get married and have children.” It could be argued that those are four things, but the point remains that beating poverty should be easy.

          You just need enough money to not die of malnutrition or exposure and get to school. Most of the homeless people I know have enough resources to do this, and they spend all their money on substance abuse.

      • I personally witnessed the tug of home, neighbors, family on someone (educated, skilled, caucasian). During draconian layoffs at a manufacturing facility, dozens of displaced workers refused to consider taking available jobs in other cities, or states. These people were hoping they would “find something” before the unemployment payments and savings ran out.

        It seems “the force” can be more powerful than the instinct to survive.

        • It is a maxim of economic theory that of the three main components of business – capital, equipment, and labor – labor is the least mobile. And for obvious reasons – children, family, schools, housing traps, real estate cycles, etc. Capital, of course, is the most mobile. So it shouldn’t be hard to understand why people don’t move when a job goes up in smoke or a neighborhood goes to hell.

        • Economic theory explains a syndrome, but does not explain how economics overwhelms survival. Maybe it is just the generations since WW2. The Okies packed-up and moved west (at least a goodly number of them). There was no social safety net to force people to stay where they were. If the economic and government environment of the last 60 years had been in place during the depression, you would still need to “round the horn” in a ship to get to Californication.

        • Well, that’s quite a word salad. “explains a syndrome?” “ovewhelms survival?” It’s much simpler than that: economics in this case just states a fact. People are slow to move when compared with the rapidity with which capital and machinery move. When the economic picture in an area changes, new investment (capital) can disappear in an hour. Factories can be packed up, machinery moved to another state or another country, with no ties that bind. But people have relatives, they have families, they have friends, they have kids in school, they may have a mortgage they can’t escape. And they have emotional attachments and inertia when they’ve been settled somewhere for a while.

          Social safety nets don’t “force” people to stay where they are; they make it possible for people to stay where they are in the absence of a job. Apart from the ties that bind above, a person is free to seek work elsewhere. US labor mobility after WWII was facilitated by the postwar economy and the fact that returning servicemen had not put down roots yet. But if welfare had been in place in the ten years of ’29 to ’39, it wouldn’t have forced you to “round the horn” because of the laziness of workers it engenders, because the Panama Canal was finished before WWI.

        • We agree on everything. I just do not understand how people prize location, family, friends, homestead above family survival.

          The “round the horn” note was to make the point that if the modern system of disincentivizing personal responsibility had existed during the depression, the bulk of the populace would be resident along the eastern seaboard.

        • Ah – well, that’s different. Of course, family concerns (parents that don’t want to move) can complicate things, but we must not forget that even in free fire zones like Chicago’s south side, or Baltimore, or (pick a sewer), people also buy lottery tickets. That is, they believe that others will be shot, but not them. They believe they are safe because they are smart, or secure where they live, or because they are careful, or don’t go out at night, or aren’t allowed to by the parole board, or any of a thousand rationalizations to explain away their inertia, or cleaving to some funky macho territorial imperative that this is MY turf. I agree, however: when in a free-fire zone, beat feet. Move the family, make them safe. Of course, that assumes you have the money for gas, or a car, or are not dependent on local social services for your next meal, etc. Massive numbers of people don’t even have this month’s rent, let alone next month’s. Would I stay? Not a chance. Can I understand why others might stay? Yup.

        • I get that it happens. I just don’t understand the impulse overriding the survival instinct when the environment is that dangerous. It’s one thing to end up being poor because you refuse to move. This is America. Being poor isn’t going to kill you until you’re pretty old anyway. It’s another thing to die young.

        • “I get that it happens. I just don’t understand the impulse overriding the survival instinct…”

          Neither do I. Adults are supposed to protect the family, no matter the inconvenience. Hope (as in “hope we don’t get killed”) is a plan for doom. Not sure whether to have sympathy, empathy or interest in anyone who puts location over family health, safety, and future.

  8. “… Cook County announced the layoff of 17 of its prosecutors.”

    That is a feature, not a bug! Why? Because that helps perpetuate the crime which requires more “solutions” from politicians. In other words laying off prosecutors helps crime to grow which is job security for politicians.

    Although it surprises me because I figured politicians would ALWAYS want to hire more government employees to:
    (a) increase their voting base, and
    (b) increase their ability to attack naysayers

  9. I hate to say it- but those that blame the gun, instead of the evil person holding it, should encounter this type of violence more often. Only then will they finally understand that our nation’s violent crime problem is solely due to feral, soulless animals, and the only reasonable remedy is long, consecutive prison sentences, paired with the death penalty when appropriate.

  10. You know if all these ‘activist’ were worth a damn we wouldn’t have this problem. But as we can surmise that this guy’s concept of ‘activist’ was probably the same kind of ‘activism’ that the DNC uses. Read: just commingling actual crimes and blaming it on the Republicans.

    • While the system funds your lifestyle at $100k+ per year from the system. LOTS better than SNAP card and Section 8 (alone). Add them together with some larceny and pot and you got a new Escalade ever year.

  11. Chicago does not have a gun problem, or a “gun violence” problem, or failure of background checks to reduce illegal purchases and use. The problem related to deaths and injuries caused by guns in the wrong hands is a problem with roots in the white-contolled surrounding rural counties, and incompetent gun control in neighboring states (as far away as Florida and Texas). Guns from these white bread cities and states allow the bloodshed to continue, and increase, unabated. If a wall of police were set around Chicago, no guns could get in. Better, if gun sales in neighboring communities and states were prohibited, legal purchasers of guns would not see Chicago as a ready source of money from black market trafficking. The people of Chicago would rather be left alone, without guns. But everyone else is making it so easy to get guns, and guns cause people to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. The problem is not in, or about, Chicago. It is everyone else !

    Over.

    • LOL. If everyone else is the problem, then you might the problem. I know this because I’m the only sane person on planet Earth, y’all are crazy. 🙂

    • My uncle has a drinking problem. I stopped drinking in order to help him. He’s still got a drinking problem. Not sure what else I can do. Maybe ask my friends to stop drinking?

        • “Common sense” laws. Like Prohibition. That’s the ticket. It’s worked so well before!”

          Prohibition didn’t last long enough. Only thirteen years. Need a generation, at least, to begin to measure effectiveness.

    • Wait- so the problem is the surrounding areas where guns are so easily and readily available? Lol. If that was true, then why aren’t those places seeing similar levels of violence in such a concentrated area. After all, the violence in Chicago is nearly 100% contained in a tiny, geographic area. No, the problem isn’t the accessibility of guns. It’s the feral animals who have no compunction with killing another human being. It’s all about IQ. The average criminal has an IQ that hovers around 70, which is nearly mentally retarded. Look into the Bell Curve of you want to understand the problem of violence in America.

      • Pretty much this unfortunately. IQ does lead to culture. This is not controversial when talking about high IQ. Scientists, researchers, and professionals (doctors, lawyer, engineers) are examples of high IQ culture. All those fields have developed advanced language, their own conventions, and standard practices. If you don’t have a high enough IQ you don’t thrive in those communities. When people have IQ two standard deviations below the median… well you get other types of culture. And when you link race to IQ…well that is haram.

        • That’s because IQ and race itself aren’t linked, with maybe one exception, and that’s the Ashkenazi Jews with a slightly higher than average IQ than their surrounding populations. They also suffer from Tay Sachs disease, and there is strong evidence the genes for these two factors may be linked. There is at least a very strong correlation.
          Race and IQ as being linked is widely dismissed by the scientific community. It’s been studied to death and the answer is obvious and well tested. Race, in and of itself, is not a predictor of IQ.
          But IQ and groups of people can be linked, like IQ and countries. For instance, people from most countries in Asia consistently outscore people in the US, on average. The US consistently outscores Russia and most of the former soviet bloc, save Poland.

        • Race and IQ are linked, that is the scientific consensus. In fact increasing so now that genetic studies have proved there is a difference in frequency of certain key genes and markers

          And race and crime rates are extraordinarily correlated.

        • I keep seeing IQ linked to race; IQ is assessed by a test, which many studies have shown to be biased towards white culture – not surprisingly, since the tests are constructed by white people. As a result, blacks from a black cultural and behavioral environment will measure lower on the test by design. Add to that the fact that among those in the black culture, as well as in poor neighborhoods, schooling is generally lower quality than in affluent neighborhoods. There’s no denying that home life, encouragement, high quality teachers and teaching in a non-confrontational environment will result in higher-performing students on tests such as Stanford-Binet. The reverse is also true, and blacks will score lower because of the lack of education and training on test strategies; it’s not necessarily at all correlated directly with genetics.

          So: you have a poor environment, with cultural pressures that direct away from formal education; high crime; gangs; and danger, operating as a distraction for school kids growing up in a societally inferior environment. You then add the known dysfunctionality of single-parent households, which is at epidemic levels in the black community, poor training – which in a tight job market overpopulated with illegal aliens who will work for almost nothing makes it extremely hard to get any job, much less a good one with OJT that stands as a desirable career to encourage young blacks to study hard to earn that job, and you end up with a witches’ broth. Add in survival requirements imposed by gangs who make money through drugs, extortion, human trafficking, etc., which drives youth into the wrong crowd and wrong peer group and values, and there goes the neighborhood.

        • Poor environment may also be one with increased exposure to chemical toxins that impair cognitive development.

        • @George Steel — Actually, many studies have shown that IQ tests are culture, language, and gender neutral. So, no, blacks don’t score lower on IQ tests by design, and there is no evidence — empirical or otherwise — to suggest that this is the case. As a matter of fact, there is well over 100 years of repeatedly and a thoroughly-scrutinized research, backed by the APA with studies released as recently as 2015 IIRC, that IQ tests are anything but biased for or against any one demographic.

          Here’s a whole series of interviews with experts in several fields, including: genetics, economics, criminology, etc.

          Now, you add all of this to the fact that in many poor communities doing well in sk00l will get you ridiculed as “acting white.” Or some such horseshit like that.

          But, you do make a valid point in pointing out that a good home life is essential for success later in life. Whether your parents are married and stable in their relationship or not is the #1 indicator of you: staying out of prison, doing good in school, having a good social life with requisite social skills, etc. Oh, and by the by, IQ is simply a function of our ancestors developing in wildly disparate environments over the last 60,000 years or so. Simply put: different people had to develop different strategies for survival in different circumstances, which caused some to advance more and faster than others.

          I left your second paragraph alone because, really, there’s nothing to argue with there.

        • There are two components to this issue of performance skew as a function of race/environment. One is the issue of test bias – that is, questions that bear on individual experience that would be uncommon in one environment and common in another would be likely to skew in favor of those from the environment in which they are common. And there certainly have been studies indicting IQ tests for that bias. And this flaw is most notable in tests that define intelligence in terms of specific skills (IQ) rather than general intelligence (g). Steven Jay Gould has written on this issue.

          The other side of that is that performance on a test is bound to be mediated by experience in practicing specific cognitive skills that are tested. So comparisons of test scores of people with widely different life experiences, and specifically, cognitive habits such as puzzle solving, some of which cognitive habits may be taught in one environment but not in the other, invalidate the measure as an expression of intellectual potential – i.e. represent bias in the test. Jencks and Phillips have posited that the gap can largely be erased by deep integration, immersing black children in an environment where such cognitive habits are commonplace and socially expected, and have some evidence to prove it.

          This is not settled, and there is wide potential for circular reasoning to enter into the analysis – but you cannot say that there is not racial/environmental bias in a test if an individual’s experience is so dominated by a cultural echo chamber that he or she is essentially deprived of practice in, for example, pattern matching analogy puzzles altogether in life experience. A great example is any component of a verbal test that does not account for the lower level of literacy exhibited by children from failing school systems. Since those systems skew to poverty-stricken areas, and blacks are disproportionately represented in poverty-stricken areas, by definition there is skew built into such a question. If you can’t read it, and you can’t understand it, you can’t answer it.

          You will get no argument from me on the evolution issue, however; the fact that there are white people and there are black people – all of whom arose from black stock, but differentiated based on the difference in insolation intensity between equatorial and northern regions based on Vitamin D toxicity and deficiency, establishes incontrovertibly that the time over which the two stocks were geographically separated was sufficient to result in significant physical trait population drift. Likewise, the exigencies of survival in harsh northern climates through severe glacial epoch winters in a primitive state of technological development compared to that required to survive in the relatively benign environment in which man initially developed, and to which he was already acclimated, most certainly would result in more stringent selection on a variety of individual and social cooperation capacities.

          The question is whether or not these challenges would produce cognitive skill differentiation measurable by IQ tests. And that remains to be seen. But if so, then it is further evidence of IQ test bias.

        • George, the developers of IQ tests specifically design them to not be racially or culturally biased. Is the military a racist organization because it discriminates by IQ? For example, the Army has been testing IQ for a 100 years. They had test variations back in the day that did not even require literacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_General_Classification_Test
          Is the military discriminating against the poor? Somehow, when we need a successful, ordered culture suddenly I.Q. matters.

        • Except that if you look closely at the history of testing in the military, you will see that the beta test was specifically aimed
          at eliminating the bias intrinsic to the alpha test, because of the literacy disparity. That literacy disparity in and of itself makes the Alpha test a biased test. It does not have to pivot around the content of the question; bias can pivot around the manner in which the question is asked. Literacy, vocabulary, grammar – all of these, clearly skewed between the black community and its adoption of “ebonics” and the white community, represent vectors of bias in the test that favor whites. Blacks may be lower in IQ; it is open to question whether or not they are lower in g, the general measure. But there are many questions to be answered as to whether or not IQ is correlated with success in life, and if so (I believe it is), what the correlation coefficient is. And this latter issue is what brings up the mediating value of g as a measure.

      • “The average criminal has an IQ that hovers around 70”. I’d appreciate a source on that. Since my days getting a CJ degree I’ve always seen somewhere close to 8 to 10 points lower (90 to 92) than the average, which, in the US, isn’t even a full standard deviation.

        • No, you are well of the mark. Where did you get you CJ? Mine grad was at John Jay CCJ.
          The average serial killer is about ~94 IQ, average criminal of all types of crime is about 8 to 10 points below the mean, but but the average violent criminal is down in the 80s, not the 90’s.

          IQ testing of released prisoners also shows a very high degree of correlation with violent crime recidivism

          The known and strong correlation between low IQ an violent crime is well established and is statistically valid in all the major studies.

          It is one of the underlying reasons for racial disparity in crime — seen worldwide, and drawn specifically from genetic markers we now know are correlated in frequency with race.

          Now sure, poverty is a major factor. Poverty, lead and environmental factors are significant and quite possible the most significant factors. But the data and science show there are also genetic factors that correlate in frequency by race.

          I

        • “average criminal of all types of crime is about 8 to 10 points below the mean, but but the average violent criminal is down in the 80s, not the 90’s.” – Are these average criminals, OR the averages for the criminals who were caught?

      • “Look into the Bell Curve of you want to understand the problem of violence in America.”

        But wait. Guns are making people do things they wouldn’t do otherwise. Take away the guns, and they go back to other weapons, and who cares about that?

        • Not much political hay to be made out of baseball bats, homemade shivs, and back-alley beatdowns. Agitating against guns is where all the money’s at.

        • “Not much political hay to be made out of baseball bats, homemade shivs, and back-alley beatdowns. Agitating against guns is where all the money’s at.”

          But truth is in the last sentence.

        • Sam I didn’t know a gun was so influential. I carry one all day, every day. It’s never told me to pull the trigger inadvertently. Is that because i’m not black or is it because I have a good paying job? I’m sure you have the answer.

    • Ummm, yeah, a sarcasm tag would help. But in the end, blaming the inanimate object instead of the person is truly not just farcical, but insane. But, it also keeps the money coming in to the victim brigade, so for the immediate pocket book, being a victim really is a money maker; it is just the long term viability of the society that does not accept personal responsibility that is the problem.

        • ‘…the comment does help illustrate the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

          Happy to be of service.

      • “But in the end, blaming the inanimate object instead of the person is truly not just farcical, but insane.”

        But so very “caring”, no?

        • “Sam I think you mean the “low spark of high heeled boys.” LMAO”

          Maybe this one was actually for ThomasR?

      • Gun Activist Shot Dead In Chicago Violence

        “If a wall of police were set around Chicago”

        “The whole city or just a certain side of it?”

        I vote for including the whole city, with TSA in charge of security.

        • In other words, a crap-ton of money changes hands and nothing else changes? I really need to get on the cash-flow side of one of these government boondoggles. Copywriting pays dick.

    • Three facts put the lie to your longwinded apologia:

      1. The majority of crime guns recovered in Illinois originated in Illinois.

      2. Extensive federal laws already criminalize the purchase of pistols in other states by non-residents of those states. They further penalize trafficking in firearms.

      3. The other states, such as Indiana and Texas, the ones with supposedly lax gun laws, do not themselves suffer anywhere near the same level of gun violence as Illinois, especially Chicago, does.

      Checkmate.

      If you’re going to play the anti-gun spin game, in here among well-informed firearms freedom proponents, then you need much better talking points. Otherwise, you’re better off regurgitating the same stale, discredited tripe elsewhere in any of hundreds of anti-freedom echo chambers.

    • And I suppose the “gun violence” in France is the fault of the white countries with easy access to guns as far away as Turkey? Thanks for playing, try again.

        • Not gonna lie, I wasn’t sure at first myself. Seemed like something one of the trolls would have come up with. Then I checked who posted it and couldn’t remember any instance of you showing such stupidity.

        • “Then I checked who posted it and couldn’t remember any instance of you showing such stupidity.”

          I come by stupid honestly, and often. But writing stuff like this is hard work. I need a ‘nuther beer.

    • “. . . everyone else is making it so easy to get guns . . . ” Blame Eli Whitney and his contemporaries who developed the milling machine around 1818. Or, modern machinists who developed CNC milling machines; or, the inventors of 3D-printing. The brutal facts of the matter are that making guns is now so easy that we are beyond the point of no return. Strike a magic wand: make all guns in America disappear. They will suddenly re-appear from cottage industrialists. Or smugglers; probably both. Gun-control was somewhat feasible 100 to 200 years ago. Such is no longer the case. The last possibility remaining is enforcing felon-in-possession; i.e., felon-control rather than artifact-control. Locking-up OFWGs is not going to stop American youths from enrolling in VoTech machine shop courses.

      • “The brutal facts of the matter are that making guns is now so easy that we are beyond the point of no return.”

        But, we simply must do something. If it saves only a single life…..

        “Locking-up OFWGs is not going to stop American youths from enrolling in VoTech machine shop courses.”

        No, but it would certainly reduce the threat posed by OFWGs. At least something would have been done.

        Ok, ok…../s

    • Sam I Am, sorry, its the ED-209’s being created by the BT series of single mothers, sisters, aunts, grandmothers, or whoever else is raising them.

      • “Sam I Am, sorry, its the ED-209’s being created by the BT series of single mothers, sisters, aunts, grandmothers, or whoever else is raising them.”

        Aawww man. Blaming the victims.

        /s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s

    • Your post makes no sense at all and you fail logic 101/
      Chicago has a massively elevated rate of knife murder bludgeoning murder, strangulation and beating murder.

      And blaming surrounding people is obscene and does not pass logic test either. Why do those “white” areas you blame not have the same murder rate if they are the cause?

      • “Chicago has a massively elevated rate of knife murder bludgeoning murder, strangulation and beating murder.”

        Well, that’s way better than guns.

        “Why do those “white” areas you blame not have the same murder rate if they are the cause?”

        Because exporting all those guns to gangs in Chytown means there are fewer guns in the surrounding locales to cause gun violence.

        You don’t need complicated logic here.

        • If I didn’t know better me thinks you are a massive troll – knife murder bludgeoning murder, strangulation and beating murder – is way better than guns? No. Logic like that is a childish trap. Nothing more. A weapon is a weapon. Murder is murder. And sadly, a troll is a troll. White “privilege” does not exist.

        • Superficial reading, and knee-jerk reactions are normally the tools of the left. It is discouraging how many here cannot comprehend a complex comment that is shading the mindless mantra of the gun grabbers.

          Maybe I overestimated the audience.

        • “…knife murder bludgeoning murder, strangulation and beating murder.” is better than guns? Now I know you’re a troll – but a creative one. If I was illogical I would be in your corner. Try as I must, no see-gar. LMAO.

        • If Sam is a troll, he is really bad at it. I often don’t follow his logic and disagree with him. Based on all his other comments on TTAG, I figured either I wasn’t following his logic or he was being sarcastic, but no one got it because text lacks tone.

        • See, sometimes I just don’t get Sam. I’m assuming Jamaican accent giving me a prize for being right, but I have no idea what “Hahbahna” is.

        • “Hah bah nah”

          Habana (in Spanish, the “v” can be pronounced as a “b”)

          Havana

          A type of cigar.

    • The problem isn’t criminals in Chicago and corrupt politicians who do nothing about them, its guns being available in other states? What have you been smoking?

  12. I’d be interested in bringing back Banishment. Just kick these people out of the city, with full legal authority for anyone to shoot them on sight if they ever return.

    • I like a capitalist approach. If we bust a criminal who is a citizen give them the option of a suitcase of cash that equals some percentage of the cost of incarceration. If they don’t take the cash they serve their full time. If they take the cash they renounce their citizenship and we buy them a one-way ticket to the country of their choice. The criminal is barred from re-entry forever under penalty of death. This is all voluntary so I don’t see how this is inhumane or unconstitutional. Hell, the rest of the world is pretty much doing this to the U.S. and the West right now. What is a refugee if not a political undesirable a.k.a. a criminal. The cash incentive is our civilized twist on things.

      • That encourages them to breed like crazy and instill in their children the ethos that they must be deported for the good of the family.

        In effect, buying more of the same problem.

      • The Supreme Court has already held that that the death penalty must be handed down by a jury. A judge doesn’t cut it, neither would a simple plea bargain or statute like this.

        Besides, the more you subsidize a given behavior, the more of that behavior you get. It isn’t as simple as just netting a fraction of the incarceration expense while the crime rate remains the same.

        • I see a massive uptick in the downing of large water and aircraft as an unavoidable consequence of demand.

      • As long as that applies to white people as well. Considering they are the true immigrants because Mexicans are indigenous and the white people brought the black people by force.

        • Mexicans are only half indigenous. They’re also half Spanish. The Spanish came here and were responsible for introducing plagues (not done intentionally). And the reason they were able to conquer so easily was because the Aztecs were absolutely barbarous. The other tribes were the reason the Cortez was able to curb-stomp the Aztecs because of the Aztecs brutal practices. Practices that were so brutal that they shocked the people who came up with the Inquisition.

          Of brutal empires, the Aztecs certainly make a push for the top.

        • Well, that’s a crock. Mexicans are indigenous? Native aborigines are indigenous – throughout North, Central, and South America, over a period of tens of millennia. Columbus wasn’t Mexican, and he found the place in the late 15th century. The Vikings weren’t Mexican, and there is at least some evidence of colonization hundreds of years earlier than that, as well as conflicting evidence regarding Chinese mariner visits even earlier. The English are far more “indigenous” in the Northeast than are Spanish settlers. Many Europeans – not just from France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, the UK, etc. – came and colonized contemporaneously with the Spanish Conquistadores in various areas. So let’s not play the reclamation game, OK? The facts are available to anyone.

        • The idea would be for everyone to have this option. If you like the USA you will want to serve your time and stay. If you don’t value the US and what it has to offer, taking the money and running would be more appealing. Not sure how this would be considered subsidizing more crime. Is the concern people who just want money and to leave the US would commit a serious crime? I guess that is a concern but I would think a deeply immoral person who would do that is better outside the U.S. I suppose if the authorities could prove intent to game the system that person could get the original sentence + 15 years or something. Re: Death penalty, if this person re-entering is no longer a citizen can we create a special status and perhaps stick that person in GITMO for life instead or something. Anyway this is just a silly thought experiment. Lawyers and people smarter than me could iron out the kinks if this ever became a serious proposal. 🙂

      • “If they take the cash they renounce their citizenship and we buy them a one-way ticket to the country of their choice.”

        Problem is this: The other country, just like the US, has the absolute right to determine who enters. That one-way ticket becomes a round trip right away.

    • I favor the original meaning of Germanic “outlaw” status.
      Meaning you were deemed, “outside of the law(s) of protection.”

      And could be killed, or tortured, by anyone who recognized and caught you.

    • “Sam I am is a Soros troll.”

      If Geo would actually pay me….maybe.

      But in this instance, a re-read of the comment might be in order….reading beyond the obvious.

    • TX_Lawyer …

      Half indigenous LMFAO I have never heard that before. Tell you what feel free to deport Mexicans back to where they came from. Places like California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado and Nevada. Outside of that they’re probably Puerto Ricans anyways.

      • “Tell you what feel free to deport Mexicans back to where they came from. Places like California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado and Nevada. Outside of that they’re probably Puerto Ricans anyways.”

        Bravo! Nicely done.

      • I was responding to your out of the blue comment that Mexicans are indigenous. For the purposes of banishment, where someone comes from is entirely irrelevant, and your fixation on race makes me think you are a racist.

        Mexicans are called Hispanics for a reason. That reason is their Spanish heritage, which is usually biological as well as lingual. The only non-European feature of most Hispanics I’ve met is dark skin. This is true of the ones I’ve met from “[p]laces like California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado and Nevada.” The only Hispanics I’ve met who look like natives are a few who were born in Mexico and spoke less English than I do Spanish. The Hispanics I’ve met from further south all look very European, just tanned. Maybe that’s because one of those Hispanics grandfather was from Hungary.

        Hell, I’ve met a lot of Hispanics that don’t even have dark skin, but admittedly, most of them were from somewhere (or descended from someone from that somewhere) in Latin America other than Mexico.

  13. “anti-gun, anti-violence “activist” Willie Cooper”

    The real irony here is this article calling the victim and anti-gun “activist” because he happened ran a jobs center with the name “anti-violence” on the front door and there seems to be no online record of him talking about guns at all.

    Typical drivel from the worst writer on TTAG. 🙂

  14. At risk of blaming the victim, it seems he should have stayed safe inside behind that NO GUNS sign on the door.

  15. Chicago doesn’t have a gun problem.

    It has a Negro problem. But every other city with a sizable Negro population has the same problem, albeit not to the degree Chicago does.

    I’m sure the bed-wetting liberal types will chime in here—and to them I offer a simple challenge: Please provide a SINGLE example of a town, city, state, or nation which transitioned from majority white to majority black which saw a drop in crime and an increase in high school graduation rate.

    Bet ya can’t.

    • “which transitioned from majority white to majority black ” – Oh, yes, if you cannot name someplace that affluent Caucasians abandoned that didn’t prosper after they fled with their resources, it’s proof that Negros are the problem.

      • But those “affluent Caucasians” didn’t get that way without hard work.

        Do you think those cities just sprouted fully formed from the Earth? No, dear boy. Detroit was the “Paris of the Midwest” when white people were the majority. Do you think EVERY white person in Detroit was affluent? What are you, Bernie “White people don’t know what it’s like to be poor” Sanders? Plenty of white people in Detroit were working class folk—most of them were, as a matter of fact. Why did they leave Detroit? Why do they leave Atlanta, Baltimore, etc?

        Because any time the black population grows, crime increases.

        Want to play the poverty card? Why aren’t the poorest places in the country the most violent? Why aren’t the residents of Owsley County, KY killing each other in droves?

        Keep trying, buckaroo.

        • Culture, not race. What we call race is actually 99% culture and 1% genetics. It’s all about the mental operating system — and that is not an easy thing to change.

        • Mr. J-C – You can conflate correlation with causation as well as the best “gun violence” researchers.

          Not quite “droves”, but significantly higher than average:

          “Owsley County, Kentucky, violent crime, on a scale from 1 (low crime) to 100, is 54. Violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. The US average is 31.1.”

          http://www.bestplaces.net/crime/county/kentucky/owsley

        • Serpent Vision, you realize that Kentucky county has lower income but still has considerably lower murder rate than chicago?

        • I can’t say I’m familiar with the place, but I would guess that there are a lot of differences between that county and Chicago beyond relative poverty and racial makeup.

        • “Serpent Vision, you realize that Kentucky county has lower income but still has considerably lower murder rate than chicago?”

          Well…..that certainly explains what is wrong with Kentucky.

  16. So. Two out of twenty hit the target.
    Based on that alone, I’d say the hitter was a New York City police officer.

    • No, at least he/they hit his/their target . . . 2x . . . which ended in a death. That is better than alot of drivebys and better than alot of NYC’s finest on a Monday. If anyone asks why you need 20 rounds tell them, “cuz fins on bullets are not a thing [yet]”

    • I’m not so sure?? I think with all the training they get, they would get at least three hits out of twenty or more rounds.

  17. Violent crime is always highest in Socialist countries. Why does anyone think Chicago would be any different than other Socialist countries?

    • ” SHOULD HAVE BEEN A DGU.”

      I admit we all like to jump to the DGU mantra whenever an unarmed person is gunned down, or attacked with a deadly weapon. But in this case, would there have been time to respond at all?

      • Not really the point, Sam. Without a gun you’re just a victim. With a gun you may still be a victim. But you have a chance.

        • “With a gun you may still be a victim. But you have a chance.”

          What sort of chance? Against an announced attacker, one in front of you, threatening? Or maybe one who just walks up behind you and plays the “knock-out” game?

          Just saying that there are some situations we need to acknowledge, situations where no amount of training and firepower will do any good. It is good to never get fully comfortable with our assumptions, presumptions and certainties.

        • Against attackers with a 10% hit rate? Maybe a pretty good one to at least draw and lay down some covering fire.

        • As you undoubtedly know, “covering fire” is illegal, but not the point here.

          We agree that an armed person might be able to defend against an attack that can be seen developing. Question is, “What good is being armed when attacked without warning, without notice, without being able to see the attacker? Carrying a firearm is not voodoo. Believing so can lead to unjustified self-assurance, and maybe to a belief that being armed solves all problems (SAS not withstanding).

          We should all question out belief that being armed always provides “a chance”; not so.

        • Being armed always provides a chance – a better chance than not being armed, because all the options open to you unarmed are also open to you when armed, plus the ability to fight back. The chance may not be very high, depending on the nature of the attack (a sniper round to the head from hundreds of yards away), or it might be very high (an assailant who is drunk and attacking you with a stick). And everything in between. But in all cases, being armed provides a greater chance than not being armed. And the more well-trained and aware you are, the better the chance is that if you are given an opportunity to defend yourself, you will prevail.

        • “…the better the chance is that if you are given an opportunity to defend yourself, you will prevail.”

          And there’s the rub…opportunity. Not arguing people should not be armed, only pointing out that being armed is not magic, and folks should contemplate that.

        • “As you undoubtedly know, “covering fire” is illegal, but not the point here.” Only if you hit someone other than an attacker. And he is dead, so illegal would have been the least of his worries. Also I should have said suppressive fire. (Not that that changes any of the points.

          Using a gun is the best way to defend oneself, statistically speaking. You can’t use a gun if you aren’t armed. Therefore, being armed is the best way to avoid being murdered when someone tries to murder you. (Not being in the situation in the first place is the best way to not be murdered). Being armed greatly increases your chances of successfully defending yourself. If someone gets the drop on you or manages to drop a satellite on you, well you’re probably dead.

        • We agree about the armed citizen (resident?). It seems I am being ineffective here. My line of thought is to caution people that a gun can resolve every kind of attack, can protect against every assault.

        • Getting ambushed sucks.

          But that’s not an argument against carrying the most effective self-defense tool ever devised.

        • “Not really the point, Sam. Without a gun you’re just a victim. With a gun you may still be a victim. But you have a chance.”

          Actually, it is the point. Carrying a gun does not eliminate, remove, reduce, inhibit the potential of an attack. A gun on hand does not alter the skew of “the chance”. The nature of the attack determines the magnitude of “the chance”.

          There are, and have been reported here, many incidents where the attack provided opportunity for an armed response, but the attackee had no weapon (especially a gun) available. Such incidents could rightly be labeled. “Should have been a DGU”. When people are ambushed, attacked from behind, blind-sided, a gun would have been useless at the initiation of the attack. With no “chance” to deploy a gun, there is no “chance” to respond with a DGU. In the reported incident, had the attackee not been injured/shot in the hail of bullets, had gone to effective cover, then be killed in a flanking maneuver, a declaration of, “Should have been a DGU” would pertain.

          The reported shooting was sufficiently of interest that the, “Should have been a DGU” amounted to nothing more than copying the tricks of the left; using misleading headlines. (mere click bait)

        • “A gun on hand does not alter the skew of ‘the chance.'” Studies have shown that each additional CHL reduces violent crime. So having a gun on hand does alter the chance of an attack happening.

          Maybe not a targeted attack as this appears to be.

        • “Maybe not a targeted attack as this appears to be.”

          That’s pretty much the tale, isn’t it?

  18. Police found twenty shell casings near his body — a big clue that someone (or someones) wanted him dead. And that his killer(s) had terrible marksmanship skills; he was hit twice.
    Terrible marksmanship? That’s 10% same as most police departments…….where were the police when this happened?
    How do they know they didn’t just throw down a lot of empties down to confuse them?

  19. It’s strange how many anti-violence activists end up getting hit in Chicago. A non-cynic would probably determine that the gangs are afraid that the activists will hurt them and reduce their numbers.

    A realist knows that the activists are (sometimes former) gangbangers that are neck-deep in the game except they’re using taxpayer money to do it.

  20. What’s the old saying? “Those who live without a gun sometimes die without a gun”….or something like that.

  21. I don’t think you folks know what “irony” means. Irony would be if a gun advocate, a person who espoused gun use, one who thought that everyone should carry was killed in gun violence. Then he/she would have been the victim of his/her own beliefs.

    • The “irony” of this story is a person who believed it was possible to convince people that non-violence was the enlightened path. The way to fulfillment. The antidote to violence. Violence killed him; a victim of his own belief that violence could be talked into non-existence.

  22. Maybe they are going about this all wrong.
    They need to open two shooting ranges and provide accurate video tutorials on target identification, sight alignment, trigger squeeze and of course shot placement.
    Nobody cares if the gang-bangers kill each other off, as quickly as possible.
    It is te innocent children and neighborhood helpers trying to end the violence by pleading.
    Let’s teach the bangers how to hit and kill only the intended victim, the rival drug dealer.
    Innocent black lives matter,
    Since they do have evil people in Chicago, some in the Mayor’s office, more accurate target identification, shot placement, trigger squeeze and maintaining sight picture might reduce the deaths we care about?

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