So far in July, as of this report, 74 people had been fatally shot. Another 352 had been wounded by gunfire, for a total of 426 shooting victims.
USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- Chicago police were still investigating the carnage of a drive-by shooting that turned a funeral into a battlefield in a city that has, according to the Washington Post, seen an increase of shootings this year by 47 percent and homicides are up a staggering 51 percent.
Fifteen people were wounded and more than 60 rounds were fired, as reported by local news agencies, and one person was in custody. This came after 20 people were shot during the previous 24-hour period, and it followed a weekend during which 63 people were shot including 12 fatally, according to WLS News.
@WGNNews WAS THE ONLY STATION GRANTED PERMISSION TO USE THIS VIDEO FROM IT'S OWNER.
This is from Tuesday's shooting outside a funeral @ 79th & Carpenter.
Several young children were standing around w/ adults, when gunfire erupts. This group runs and takes cover by a nearby car. pic.twitter.com/J271mL3uNI— Courtney Gousman (@cgousman) July 22, 2020
While President Donald Trump offered to send 175 federal officers to the city, according to a report from CBS News, anti-gun Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot tweeted “Under no circumstances will I allow Donald Trump’s troops to come to Chicago and terrorize our residents.”
Under no circumstances will I allow Donald Trump’s troops to come to Chicago and terrorize our residents.
— Mayor Lori Lightfoot (@chicagosmayor) July 21, 2020
Considering the body count over the past few days, Windy City residents are already being terrorized by armed, violent criminals.
The CBS News report said nine of the drive-by victims were in “serious to critical condition.” One of those wounded was described as “an innocent bystander” who was “fighting for her life.”
Chicago is producing some alarming shooting and death statistics, according to the popular website ‘heyjackass.com,” which keeps a running count of the dead and wounded. It is not a pretty picture, even in a city known as the murder capital of the United States. Chicago annually produces more murder victims than some entire states, according to data from the FBI Uniform Crime Report for any given year.
Statistics from “heyjackass” tell a grim story. So far in July, as of this report, 74 people had been fatally shot. Another 352 had been wounded by gunfire, for a total of 426 shooting victims. Total homicides for the month were listed as 84, so not all of the city’s murder victims are being killed by gunfire.
For the “week in progress” (July 19-25, 2020), there have been a dozen people killed, 61 wounded, and a total of 13 homicides.
The year-to-date statistics suggest violence in Chicago is out of control. So far, according to “heyjackass,” the city has seen 382 people fatally shot, a staggering 1,762 shot and wounded, and 425 homicides logged. [and the Democrat mayor is worried about President Trump sending in more offices to help contain the mayhem!?] And the year is only into its seventh month, with August and September still on the horizon. Those two months traditionally account for a high number of murders.
According to the Washington Post account, “After shots were fired from a black vehicle toward a group of people leaving a service at Rhodes Funeral Home…the attendees exchanged gunfire with the people in the car, Chicago Police Department spokesman Tom Ahern told The Washington Post. The car crashed and three or four occupants fled in separate directions, authorities said.”
A question nobody seemed to ask was how many of the people involved in this gun battle were legally licensed to carry concealed firearms? It is legal, under Illinois law, to carry concealed in the city, provided you have a permit to do so.
There is no small irony in the fact that, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, the funeral where this shooting occurred was for a man identified as Donnie Weathersby, 31, who had been shot to death just days earlier only about 1.5 miles from the funeral home where Tuesday’s gunfire erupted.
The Sun-Times also keeps a running scorecard of murder victims, but their count of homicides was listed at 411. There was no explanation for the discrepancy between the newspaper’s body count and that provided by the “heyjackass” website. With mayhem continuing at a rapid pace, there seems little doubt that the Sun-Times number will catch up to the website’s count.
Chicago isn’t the only city reeling from violence, but it appears to be out-pacing all the others in the number of victims. Spikes in gun-related violence are being reported by New York City, Seattle and Baltimore.
Baltimore Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young was quoted by the local Fox News affiliate observing, “We’re talking about Black Lives Matter. Then we need to act like the black murders in the city matter as well.”
The long time Democrat-run city is on track to set another homicide record this year.
Not to be left out of the killing and shooting spree Democrat Mayor Bill de Blasio’s run New York City, hurried to catch up last month. According to a report in the Financial Times, 270 people were shot, translating to a 154-percent increase from the same month last year. Over the July 4 2020 holiday weekend, 64 people were shot in The Big Apple. There has been at least a 23-percent increase in New York City homicides so far this year, the report said.
But Chicago is by far the worst of them all. And now in late breakling news it appears, Mayor Lightfoot has changed her tone, according to Fox32 News. She acknowledged federal agent “will be used to help Chicago police crackdown on violent crime.” The station quoted an unidentified source revealing “more than 200 federal agents are coming to Chicago to work alongside colleagues who have spent their careers fighting crime in the city.”
In the wake of the funeral drive-by mayhem, their work is definitely cut out.
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.