Violence Isn’t a Just a Chicago (or Democratic) Problem

Gun Rights

JD Vance, who aspires to be the next vice president of the United States — if that can be called an aspiration — tried to make a joke about Chicago last week. As usual, it was as unfunny as the rest of his second-rate Trumpian riffs.

“It’s almost a joke to me that they held [the Democratic National Convention] in Chicago, which has become the murder capital of the United States of America thanks to very failed Democrat leadership,” Vance said, comparing the city to “a Third World country.”

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“My little theory about why they decided to have the convention in Chicago is Tim Walz has been going around saying he served in war and maybe they did it in Chicago so they can accurately say that he visited a combat zone,” Vance added, attacking Walz’s National Guard service and our city’s reputation for violence in a hack one-liner that lacked only a rim shot.

Chicago has not actually been a combat zone since 1812, when the Potawatomi killed 38 U.S. soldiers and 14 civilians at the Battle of Fort Dearborn. And as the Sun-Times pointed out, Chicago has a lower murder rate than Cleveland, which Vance represents in the Senate, and where Republicans were not afraid to hold their convention in 2016.

Yet Chicago is always the Republican Party’s example for America’s violence. Trump compared us to a Middle Eastern war zone and called our crime rate “an embarrassment to the nation.”

After Chicago was announced as the convention site in April 2023, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee snarked, “What’s the bigger concern: sirens drowning out nominating speeches or what items attendees must leave at home to make room for their bulletproof vest in their suitcase?”

I met more than a dozen delegates during the convention. Not a single one was wearing a bulletproof vest. Also, not one of the 3,000 delegates was shot during the convention, although, to be fair, some people on the South and West sides were not so lucky.

I suspect Republicans attack Chicago not because it’s a failed city, but because it’s a successful one. We have magnificent skyscrapers, a thriving middle class, three-star Michelin restaurants, a theater scene that sends actors to New York and Hollywood, and Fortune 500 headquarters. Detroit has none of those things, plus a murder rate more than twice as high as Chicago’s, but what’s the point in warning tourists not to visit Detroit? Kicking a city that’s so far down would look churlish, not to mention racist. Also, Chicago has been “Democrat-run” longer than any major American city — since 1931, when Machine founder Anton Cermak threw out Al Capone’s buddy, Big Bill Thompson — so that must be the explanation for our problems.

(The badmouthing of Chicago has damaged our image. When I’ve traveled to other cities, and suggested people visit Chicago, I’ve gotten such responses as “I’ll wear my bulletproof vest” and “I hear it’s pretty dangerous.” I tell them not to believe everything they’ve heard on Fox News.)

Chicago has a violence problem because America has a violence problem. This is a country in which anyone can get shot anywhere, at any time, for any reason, usually by a young man who had no problem obtaining weapons more powerful than those carried by the police whose job is to stop such attacks. 

Trump and his fellow Republicans tell us we cannot prevent young men from obtaining semi-automatic weapons, because that would interfere with the rights of law-abiding gun owners. All the perpetrators of those mass shootings were law-abiding gun owners right up until the day they used their legally purchased guns to kill 15 or 20 or 60 people. Mass shootings are so much a part of American life now that DraftKings could probably make good book by asking bettors to choose the location and the number of the next one.

Why don’t we just rewrite the Pledge of Allegiance so it refers to what the National Rifle Association calls the most important freedom, the freedom that guarantees all other freedoms?

I pledge allegiance to the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, and to the right to bear arms for which it stands: one nation, dodging bullets, because we have the liberty to stockpile 500 million guns.

When Lori Lightfoot was mayor, she tried to talk to Trump about stopping the flow of guns to Chicago from states with loose purchasing laws, such as Indiana and Mississippi. Trump wasn’t interested, even though more than half the firearms used in crimes here come from other states. For Trump and his assistant Trump, blaming Chicago is easier — and better politics — than blaming guns.

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