As of Monday morning, nine people had been shot to death and another 32 wounded in Chicago since the Friday that began Memorial Day weekend.
One of the youngest victims was Jacele Johnson, a four-year-old girl, who was shot while sitting in a car parked outside of a prom celebration in West Englewood as someone drove by firing. Two other children were also shot in the same incident: a 17-year-old boy who was hit in the chest and had a graze wound to the neck, and a 15-year-old girl who suffered a graze wound on her forehead, both of whom were in stable condition. Jacele was taken to a hospital and underwent surgery, and she was upgraded to serious condition Sunday morning.
The first fatality was a 34-year-old man who was shot in the chest and shoulder while sitting on the front porch of his home in Wicker Park. He was pronounced dead at the hospital. The youngest death was a 15-year-old boy in Bronzeville who was shot along with another 14-year-old struck in the foot in an alley. Other fatalities included a 20-year-old man with multiple gunshot wounds; a 24-year-old man shot in the head; a man between 20 and 30 shot in the face; a 29-year-old woman shot in the chest and leg by a group who were denied entry to a house party; a 35-year-old man shot in the stomach; and a 28-year-old man shot in the head and shoulder.
The violence is unfortunately not uncommon for the city, as other weekends have brought their own shooting sprees that left many dead, including children. While the city’s 2013 murder rate was at the lowest level since 1966, shootings and homicides were up at the beginning of this year as compared to last.
Across the country, there have been 18,760 gun incidents this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, resulting in 4,830 deaths and the death or injury of 249 children. Still, both Chicago’s gun violence and the country’s as a whole are down from much higher peaks in past decades.
Critics of gun law reforms argue that the high levels of gun violence in Chicago are proof that regulation doesn’t work, given that the city has relatively strict gun laws. But lax laws surrounding the area, both in the state of Illinois and nearby states, allow guns to flow into the city, which make up the vast majority of those seized by law enforcement. Research has found that localities in states that have weak gun laws tend to suffer higher rates of gun violence than those in states with stricter ones. Overall, more gun ownership has been found to lead to more murders.