Windy and Deadly

Regular readers of The Mole Hole will have to forgive me for revisiting this topic again. But I cannot leave it alone.

When I first arrived in Chicago-land this summer, I wrote about the surprising murder rate here and how it was actually higher than Detroit's. I really had a different opinion of the Windy City before I arrived, as I'm sure most Detroiter's do. Detroit get's such a bad rap, and all you hear about Chicago is the shopping, the theaters and the restaurants, and what a great place to visit!

At that same time, the Supreme Court had just overturned the ridiculous DC gun ban, and what I wrote about was some of the inane statements coming out of Chicago's Mayor Daly as he took the offensive in preparing to protect his own similarly absurd gun law which as of today, is still in place.

And so now, an update:

It's official. Chicago now has the highest per-capita murder rate in the country. And the point that I'm compelled to make again, and has been made by so many, a thousand times before, is that gun laws, even as "tough" as Chicago's, do nothing to prevent gun crime.

Say it anyway you want to. "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." or "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." In the case of Mayor Daly's law, the latter certainly fits the bill.

What is so hard to understand here? The highest murder rate now belongs to the place with the toughest gun laws. And before it, was Washington DC. For people intent on murder, a handgun is the overwhelmingly favorite tool. Presumably, they know murder is illegal. But they must be uninformed about the law they're breaking with that gun in their possession!