Gun Violence In Chicago

The dramatic increase of gun violence in Chicago has many questioning the effectiveness of state policies and police tactics. For many Chicagoans, gun violence is a common occurrence and this would not be the first time in which a big spike has been observed. In fact, Chicago was doing well overall in each crime category until recently in 2016, when they ended the year with 762 homicides victims that were gun related. Towards the end of 2016, Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago, had a press conference with the communities at the Malcom X College. He goes into detail of how he hopes to see a sharp decline on the heavy issue of gun violence surrounding their city. It’s an issue in which the mayor says will only work through a combined effort of its

Emanuel says that to properly improve the quality of life in Chicago they would have to work together with the community and the police would have to adjust their training to meet this new crisis. Gun violence is an issue in which to properly eradicate would require many factors to be covered by the community and police enforcement. The mayor of Chicago has implemented more officers to watch and work with communities. He knows that this could improve the poor relationship between civilians and police. Rahm Emanuel has also increased the police force by a couple hundred which would require proper training to efficiently combat gun related homicides and crime. To better understand this problem, we would have to look at the source. Chicago has implemented many strict laws through recent years so why has it still spiraled out of control now? Well there are many licensed dealers that can sell in Illinois through loop holes. They’re referred to as “Dirty dealers”. They appear

They have strict gun laws in which ban the purchase of guns within their city limits, ban the possession of any assault weapons, and they enforce steep fines if guns which are stolen or lost are not reported to the any police department in good time. The Chicago Police Department had seized 7,400 guns used in crimes in 2012, according to Richard Berk a criminologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Yet Chicago is the middle of its worst period of gun violence in the past years. The implementations of laws are good but they would need to focus on enforcing them with their police force. If we are to compare Chicago’s city to New York, they had 414 homicides in 2012 which is their all-time low. If it had Chicago's murder rate, New York would have totaled more than 1,400. Both cities share the fact that they have strict gun laws and have the problem of guns coming from outside their borders. New York, however, has distinguished itself by its anti-gang program which Chicago could benefit a ton from along with proper police training. Though people could say that New York and Chicago are different cites with different factors in each play, New York's work in reducing gang violence is a game-changer. "If you remove gang-related incidents from the Chicago homicide statistics, the homicide rate involving normal citizens is much lower," says James Alan Fox, a criminologist at