Chicago gun violence has continued to soar in recent months as the number of shootings have hit record-breaking levels. In 2016, the windy city saw 4,367 shootings with nearly 800 being fatal. As the first month of 2017 came to a close, Chicago reported a total of 310 shooting victims with 53 of those being fatal.
Earlier this year, President Trump tweeted: “If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible ‘carnage’ going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!”
Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, said during an interview that the city would be open to federal help of some kind seeing as they have not been much assistance to the Illinois city for quite some time.
“Over the years the federal government’s stepped back their resources, which we have stepped up,” Emanuel said. “The federal government can be a partner, and to be honest they haven’t been for decades.”
When interviewed by ABC News on January 25, Trump declared Chicago a “war zone.”
On January 25, two people were killed and another four were injured by gunshots when some suspects drove past a vigil that was being held in memory of a victim of gun violence and opened fire. The vigil was being held in honor of 20-year-old Jamavah Fields who was shot and killed in Chicago’s South Austin neighborhood. Among the victims injured at his vigil were his mother and a 12-year-old girl.
Critics on the left, such as Representative Luis Gutierrez and others, scoffed at Trump’s thoughts and found no reason to support arming law-abiding citizens for self-defense due to the surge in violence that Chicago is seeing.
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