It's the guns and poverty, stupid

Every time there’s a dip in the shooting gallery on Chicago’s South and West Sides, as there was last year, the mayor and the police chief trumpet the news that Chicago has turned the corner on the daily citizen fusillade against each other. At the stroke of midnight on New Year’s, gunfire began erupting anew with a huge spike in murders culminating with nine killed last weekend, the worst such February weekend violence in 18 years. An alarmed Mayor Lightfoot huddled at City Hall with Acting Police Chief Beck and 41 police commanders to strategize. Beck had to fend off questions that Lightfoot’s edict to curtail skyrocketing and bankrupting police overtime contributed to the uptick. Needless to say the violence uptick powwow wasn’t trumpeted to the media.

What every Chicagoan needs to understand is there will be no sustained drop in Chicago gun violence till we address the twin evils of gun availability and life crushing poverty that fuel the daily bloodshed on Chicago streets. Gun availability is American capitalism at its worst. America’s inner cities have been shut out from the eleven yearlong American economic miracle making the haves have more and the left out left behind in squalor. Everything else represents band aids trying to close the gaping holes in our citizenry as well as our local body politic.