How to end/reduce Chicago shootings

I assume most of you are aware that Chicago experiences a HUGE number of shootings, and is bracing for a banner weekend over the 4th. The majority of these shootings are gang/drug related, and occur in specific areas on the south and west sides of the city. You can live/move about in vast swaths of the city with no perception of risk other than you would experience in any large city.

This morning I read an op-ed in the local paper criticizing statements/efforts of the new police chief. What I don’t recall ever seeing are specific proposals as to what should be done to reduce this violence.

I suspect that the causes of this violence include long histories of prejudice and segregation against people of color, limited opportunities for people living there, a longstanding gang culture, a ready market for illegal drugs, social programs/institutions which could be improved…

What would you suggest are specific steps that could be take to address this situation? I’m looking for specific proposals specific organizations/institutions could take, rather than general urges that certain groups/individuals/everyone should simply change their attitudes.

Has any other large city succeeded in addressing this sort of thing?

Are you aware that murder rates in Chicago are not the highest in the country and that they also used to be much higher than they are now? The fixation on Chicago is anti-Obama propaganda.

But yeah, NYC has reduced murder rates much better than Chicago has.

Part of the fixation is that the numbers are so high. East St Louis has the highest rate of murders but the total number was only 27. In contrast Chicago’s 500 murders last year were a little less than Los Angeles plus Houston’s total murders. Chicago has more murders than two thirds of the states.

NYC has three times the population of Chicago and 200 less murders per year. What they need to do is follow New York’s example, lots more cops and better leadership.

What does “better leadership” look like? By whom?

Better leadership means someone like William Bratton, who has chief of police in both New York and Los Angeles, He pioneered policing that focuses on quality of life infractions and the use of statistics to assign police to areas where they are most needed. It also means a mayor and city council that will follow the advice of the new chief.

My understanding is that a big part of the murder explosion was tearing down the housing projects to spread residents all over the city, and putting major gang leaders in prison. Both of these things created power vacuums which caused a ton of smaller gangs to grow and compete with each other. Now instead of a handful of gangs located in certain neighborhoods you’ve got a ton of smaller gangs all over the place.

I’m not sure how you fix that problem.

Put in more cops. Unlikely to happen in today’s political climate.

Looks like there are currently approx 12k cops.
There were 13.6k in 2000, and 12k in 1990.

So - how many should there be?

Or is it that they should be DIFFERENT cops (more diversity), or should they police differently?

However many it takes? This is something that could be done incrementally (and it would probably have to be - no one in their right mind would become a cop right now). Start out at 500 more and see what happens.

Step one. End the Drug War. That probably takes care of at least half.

Step two. Go park in the parking lots of Indiana gun sellers, take note of the license plates, and bust people bringing guns into the state. Send them to jail for a long time.

That should probably take care of the vast majority.

Actually, no one who shouldn’t be a cop would want to be a cop right now.

There are plenty of people that would make great cops that would.

What makes you think that the number of cops is the problem?

More cops = less crime.

I’m not sure what license plates you’d be looking for. You mean Illinois plates? From the NRA (yes, I know):

(Note that Illinois requires anyone purchasing any kind of firearm to have a Firearm Owner’s Identification Card.)

Back to the NRA:

I suspect most guns used to commit murder in Chicago are handguns, which are going to be a total non-starter in terms of people with Illinois license plates buying them over the border in Indiana from Federal Firearm Licensees (gun stores). (People illegally buying guns from the trunk of some guy’s car in a random parking lot in Gary is obviously another thing, but is going to be a lot harder to spot.)

Even for long arms (rifles or shotguns), the “Indiana gun store” is probably a pretty unlikely route–it’s not impossible that a “straw purchaser” with a clean background (but a “dirty” reality) might drive to Indiana, buy a shotgun or rifle at the premises of a federally-licensed gun seller, lie on the Form 4473, get away with lying and pass the background check (because they’ve never been caught doing this sort of thing yet), and then furnish the weapon to a prohibited person. But that route is certainly not going to account for “the vast majority” of illegally-owned firearms in Chicago. For one thing, if the “straw purchaser” has such a squeaky-clean background, they could just get an Illinois FOID and make their straw purchases right there in Illinois.

I don’t think adding more cops is the answer, but I admit MMV. Personally, I think you need to go to the root issue, as always, when you want to look at real solutions. The root issues are, IMHO at least, related to lack of opportunity and the drug war. You also have systemic racism and racial tension and poverty as large aspects of the problem.

How to address them? I think the best way is to start with the drug war and lack of opportunity, though there aren’t any easy, silver bullet type solutions to this stuff. You’d need to build a system there that brings in opportunity while shutting down the reasons for the crime that’s happening, especially the gang/drug related murders by giving the people there viable alternatives. Figure out how to bring not only business there but opportunity, affluence and stability while getting rid of the illegal avenues that are all the people there have.

The trick, of course, is figuring out how to do that in a realistic way. It’s going to cost a lot, initially, and it’s going to take a lot of time and effort, and it’s not going to be a quick fix or something that can be done in the attention span of the general public, so it’s going to be a tough sell. People will be talking about going soft on crime, or giving free handouts, or all of the bad things making drugs legal will bring, blah blah blah. But simply putting more police on the street, IMHO anyway, isn’t solving the issues, it’s basically suppressing them…and that will work for only as long as you continue to suppress them and continue to ramp that up over time, so that the police force not only has to bloat to greater heights but also becomes more antagonistic and hostile to the people it’s supposedly there to protect and serve. It’s a vicious cycle.

Sure, if they see Illinois plates, that’s pretty suspect. But most of the straw purchasers are Indiana residents who either then take them into Illinois, or sell them to Illinois residents.

The selling out of the trunk in some guy’s car is exactly what needs to be dealt with, and the fact that it’s hard to spot is just an excuse, not a reason to allow these illegal transactions to continue.

Hard to catch all of them, but if you set a few examples, then maybe people will think twice before allowing themselves to be used as a gun conduit.

Then investigate the FFL’s that sold to these straw purchasers. If it was a one time thing, tell them the signs to look out for, and follow up occasionally. If it was a regular thing, then either make sure they know what they were doing was wrong, and to keep a better eye out for it in the future, doing regular audits, or find that they did know what they were doing was wrong, and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.

You talk as though the illegal import of guns into Chicago is theoretical, but 60% of the guns used in Chicago came from out of state. (And 100% came from outside the city limits.)

Most of your post is correct, but yes, there are a number of bad actors that make their living from buying a dozen handguns (usually they find a sale, but not always) then reselling them out of the back of their trunk.

This is one reason why the ATF needs to define “dealer” (suggestion, one who sells more than 12 guns a year) to stop these straw man buyers/sellers. They are the 2nd or 3rd largest sources of gun in the hands of criminals.

Mind you, they wont be spotted by checking license plates in gun store parking lots- but they can be spotted by checking form 4473 or making a new reg that any purchaser of more than X number of handguns be reported to the ATF. Then, visit that guy, and ask him where are the 20 Glocks he bought are. If he says “I sold them”- arrest him as a dealer who didnt do background checks or 4473.

Yes, that is true, but you wont spot them by checking license plates in gun store parking lots. Not to mention, only 20% come from Indiana.

And you can buy and own handguns in Chicago, so not 100%, actually 60%. Most of them were bought in Ill.

I agree with most of this, except what do you do if he says, “I lost them in a boating accident.” or “Someone stole them.”?

You will not spot them by checking license plates, you will catch them by taking note of the license plates, then knowing who they are, and keeping an eye on them. If you have a list of plates that have recently been at an Indiana gun store, and one of those plates shows up in Chicago a couple hours later, it may be reasonable to have a quick chat with that individual.

Assuming that FFLs are cooperative, and you can get a law passed or interpreted to investigate and prosecute straw purchasers as you say, that would be optimal. But, it’s not actually illegal to buy a gun and sell it to someone else in Indiana, so there would be quite a bit of pushback, and probably quite a number of people who now only sell 11 guns a year to criminals.

But, if someone takes a gun across state lines, the laws become a bit more concrete about what they were doing, and what the consequences for them should be.

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You can buy in Illinois, you cannot buy in Chicago. There are no gun shops in Chicago. “Only” 20% come from Indiana, but 60% come from out of state. And like I said, 100% come from outside Chicago.

I still struggle to understand why Chicago gets any blame for gun violence, when they are contributing nothing to it, and are only victims of other locations that do.