Why Chicago can’t get a handle on deadly shootings

Over the course of a deadly weekend on Chicago’s South and West sides — during which 74 people were shot, 12 of whom were killed — there were, according to the Chicago Tribune, six shootings that “injured four or more people in a single attack,” the largest of which “wounded eight people.”

In other words, there were six “mass shootings,” according to the increasingly common definition of that term, in Chicago in just three days. The Windy City’s weekend violence has not received anywhere near the level of national attention that would have been generated had those “mass shootings” occurred at suburban high schools, malls or movie theaters.

Calls for stricter gun-control laws follow every high-profile mass shooting; the weekend’s carnage in Chicago prompted similar demands from civic leaders and pundits. Yet the city has strict gun laws, and even when police enforce those laws diligently, the city’s liberal anti-gun caucus doesn’t always back them up.

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