Under the gun: Murder in Chicago and Toronto

[scandal 951]

http://www.wbez.org/story/under-gun-murder-chicago-and-toronto-89879

Under the gun: Murder in Chicago and Toronto

by Rob Wildeboer Aug. 01, 2011

(WBEZ/Rob Wildeboer)

It's been a summer of gun violence in Chicago. Non-stop shootings. Weekends with 4 or 5 murders, but that's nothing new. Just a long, hot summer in a big city, right?

Today we begin a week-long series comparing gun violence in Chicago with what goes on in another big city, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The two cities are the same size, but their gun violence rates are very different.

By the numbers

Toronto and Chicago both have a little less than 3 million residents. Toronto has 60 murders a year. Chicago has 450.

There were 179 shooting deaths in all of Canada in 2009. Canada’s Population was almost 34 million people. There were 376 shooting deaths in Chicago in 2009. The population of Chicago was less than 3 million.

According to a Chicago Police Department annual report, in 2009 there were 461 murders and 160 clearances.

The Chicago police department considers a case cleared when an offender has been arrested, charged and prosecuted or when the police are ready to arrest someone but something outside of the department’s control prevents an arrest from being made. The clearance rate is 34.7%. In Toronto in 2009 the clearance rate was 58.1% but they had fewer murders to solve. They cleared a total of 36 cases.

The Chicago Police Department has more than 11,000 officers. Toronto has about 5,300.

In 1992 there were 940 murders in the city. 651 of those murders were committed with firearms. The department cleared 683 cases.

The local press dubbed 2005 "the year of the gun."

BRYANT: There was a real sense of anarchy, there was a sense of danger, there was a sense that so many were being killed in our streets that we needed the politicians to do something about it.

That's Michael Bryant.

In 2005 he was the Attorney General for the province of Ontario.

He was the top law enforcement official for the province, which includes the City of Toronto.

He says, every day, he was being attacked by the press.

BRYANT: Resign! They wanted me to resign, wanted me to come up with solutions, wanted me to stop making excuses. There was, you know, a level of, I think, understandable panic that we were no longer safe communities.

So here's the thing about Toronto's "year of the gun."

That year there were 79 homicides, 20 more than usual.

By contrast, here in Chicago which has the same population as the city of Toronto, we had 448.

And that was a banner year for Chicago; murders were lower than they had been in decades.

BRYANT: Let's put it this way.

Once again, Michael Bryant, the former attorney general of Ontario.

BRYANT: In Toronto, when you hit around 30 gun homicides in a given year, that's pretty much the media tipping point after which every single gun homicide is front page news, every single one.

Bryant laughs ruefully at the fact that Chicago has 450 murders in a good year, while in Toronto, a city of the same size, 30 murders had him fighting for his political life.

Wendy Cukier calls that situation a "terrible irony"

Cukier teaches at Ryerson University in Toronto and is the president of the Coalition for Gun Control, which pushes for increasingly strict gun control in Canada.

CUKIER: Among industrialized countries, the United States, which has almost as many guns as people, has the highest rate of gun ownership, has the most resistance to gun control, and yet has the highest rate of carnage.

Here's how Cukier explains it: In countries where there is little gun crime, people are shocked into action when there is gun violence.

Meanwhile, Cukier says Americans are unfazed, or numb to gun violence because there's so much of it.

The "terrible irony" is that as a result, Cukier says, Americans don't demand an end to gun violence even though they suffer from it more than people in other industrialized countries.

To put it another way, the more violence there is, the less attention it gets.

Cukier compares Americans to a lobster in a pot of water that is gradually being heated.

CUKIER: When you're in the pot you don't recognize that you're going to boil to death. And it's just shocking, I think, to most people around the world that Americans do not realize that the conditions under which they live are comparable to conditions in developing and third world, post-conflict societies, that most people don't have to worry about their children being shot when they go to school.

[Ste 6]

To defend American gun laws:

It's part of America's tradition of personal freedom.

You know you can defend your property with deadly force if necessary, no questions asked.

Since gun-ownership rights have been granted for hundreds of years, everyone should equally own one rather than put themselves at risk from everyone else who does.

Introducing gun control is not what the country stands for, nor what the founders would have wanted. The right to bear arms wouldn't be in the constitution otherwise.

Knowing that the public is armed keeps the government in check, should they want to deliberately harm their own citizens.

Now that guy who called me a Leftist, take that back!

[IR5FORMUMSIE 850]

http://www.wbez.org/...d-toronto-89879

Scandal, does this make you more or less likely to purchase a hand gun for your wife?

[Obama 2012 1,714]

yes, blame guns for the actions of people.

[IR5FORMUMSIE 850]

http://www.wbez.org/...d-toronto-89879

Scandal, does this make you more or less likely to purchase a hand gun for your wife?

yes, blame guns for the actions of people.

It works for religions.

[Obama 2012 1,714]

It works for religions.

While in most circumstances on certain subjects, you might have a point... On this one, not so much.

Religion is mentality. It's a way of life.

A gun, it's a physical object.

What you're saying is "the church building" made me act this way. Had there not been a building there, I would have acted differently.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

yes, blame guns for the actions of people.

It would suggest that in Chicago the combination of People + Guns is not a good one...

Edited August 1, 2011 by fishdude

[scandal 951]

Scandal, does this make you more or less likely to purchase a hand gun for your wife?

She doesn't want one in the house.

I still do want one, but for ####### inexplicable reasons that don't make much practical sense but have something to do with wanting to exercise each and every one of my Bill of Rights freedoms at some point. One of these days I intend to demand that a police officer show me a search warrant , and I expect to "Plead the Fifth" too , just so I can say I've done it.

At the moment we still don't have one.

[Ste 6]

yes, blame guns for the actions of people.

That might imply that if you suddenly took all guns away from Chicago citizens, the murder rate wouldn't change. I doubt that's the case, though I could be wrong.

[IR5FORMUMSIE 850]

She doesn't want one in the house.

I still do want one, but for ####### inexplicable reasons that don't make much practical sense but have something to do with wanting to exercise each and every one of my Bill of Rights freedoms at some point. One of these days I intend to demand that a police officer show me a search warrant , and I expect to "Plead the Fifth" too , just so I can say I've done it.

At the moment we still don't have one.

I'm with her but I understand the typical Canuck response to want to own a gun for no reason. You have a right to bear arms, legs...not so much.

[IR5FORMUMSIE 850]

While in most circumstances on certain subjects, you might have a point... On this one, not so much.

Religion is mentality. It's a way of life.

A gun, it's a physical object.

What you're saying is "the church building" made me act this way. Had there not been a building there, I would have acted differently.

Reality is what we make of it. A gun is a tool, who wields it and how or why they wield is a direct outcome of their own volition. A gun can be used for a good pupose or a bad own, as can religion. Religions don't kill people, religions aren't evil, how people choose to use religion (a tool to help one deal with life) or a gun (another kind of tool) is determined by the person. Neither tool is inherently evil but it can be subverted to be used for evil purposes.

[scandal 951]

That might imply that if you suddenly took all guns away from Chicago citizens, the murder rate wouldn't change. I doubt that's the case, though I could be wrong.

Chicago has actually had amongst the most stringent gun control laws in the country for the past 30 years, including a virtual handgun ban, and it has not helped - witness the stark statistics in the OP. Those gun laws have now been thwarted in the recent McDonald v. Chicago Supreme court ruling.

Many have suggested that the reason tough gun laws in Chicago have not worked is that guns are readily available at gun shows and from dealers out of state (e.g. neighboring Indiana), as well as illegally. Those who are willing to use a handgun illegally aren't going to be put off by purchasing one and importing it within Chicago city limits in contravention of the gun law. Hence, the only effective gun laws would be cast much wider - e.g. regionally or nationally. As in Canada. But in the wake of the SCOTUS Heller and McDonald decisions, not in the USA.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Chicago has actually had amongst the most stringent gun control laws in the country for the past 30 years, including a virtual handgun ban, and it has not helped - witness the stark statistics in the OP. Those gun laws have now been thwarted in the recent McDonald v. Chicago Supreme court ruling.

Many have suggested that the reason tough gun laws in Chicago have not worked is that guns are readily available at gun shows and from dealers out of state (e.g. neighboring Indiana), as well as illegally. Those who are willing to use a handgun illegally aren't going to be put off by purchasing one and importing it within Chicago city limits in contravention of the gun law. Hence, the only effective gun laws would be cast much wider - e.g. regionally or nationally. As in Canada. But in the wake of the SCOTUS Heller and McDonald decisions, not in the USA.

I agree - gun control laws will never be effective if they only apply to certain districts in the same country. That's always going to be unenforceable.

[IR5FORMUMSIE 850]

Chicago has actually had amongst the most stringent gun control laws in the country for the past 30 years, including a virtual handgun ban, and it has not helped - witness the stark statistics in the OP. Those gun laws have now been thwarted in the recent McDonald v. Chicago Supreme court ruling.

Many have suggested that the reason tough gun laws in Chicago have not worked is that guns are readily available at gun shows and from dealers out of state (e.g. neighboring Indiana), as well as illegally. Those who are willing to use a handgun illegally aren't going to be put off by purchasing one and importing it within Chicago city limits in contravention of the gun law. Hence, the only effective gun laws would be cast much wider - e.g. regionally or nationally. As in Canada. But in the wake of the SCOTUS Heller and McDonald decisions, not in the USA.

Most of the guns used to commit crimes in Canada come from VA or other states without stringent regulations.

[scandal 951]

Most of the guns used to commit crimes in Canada come from VA or other states without stringent regulations.

VA or VT?