It was another bloody weekend in America’s third-largest city, via the Chicago Sun-Times:
But we’re not allowed to talk about it, or something. From superstar John Legend:
“A lot of “what about Chicago?” in my mentions whenever I talk about guns. We all want Chicago to be safer but please see the list of states with the highest gun mortality rates. See how far you have to go down to get to Illinois. Link – https://cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm”
A lot of “what about Chicago?” in my mentions whenever I talk about guns. We all want Chicago to be safer but please see the list of states with the highest gun mortality rates. See how far you have to go down to get to Illinois. Link – https://t.co/0onKlCheXa pic.twitter.com/6zwnqtYIQ3
— John Legend (@johnlegend) May 29, 2022
And, of course, even bringing up Chicago means you “MIGHT also be a racist”:
And Chicago is 28th in murder rates among American cities. If you always bring up Chicago, you’re probably deflecting from a conversation you’re afraid to have, you watch too much Tucker Carlson, and/or you just MIGHT also be a racist. https://t.co/YWebrOzSBT
— John Legend (@johnlegend) May 29, 2022
Now, let’s take a look at Legend’s numbers, shall we? In his first tweet, he’s linking to the CDC’s stats on “Firearms Mortality” which shows Wyoming (death rate of 25.9/100,000) is more dangerous than Illinois (death rate of 14.1/100,000.)
But if you look at the CDC’s stats on “Homicide Mortality by State,” you find — not surprisingly — an entirely different picture than what Legend suggested. Illinois, with just gun homicides, has a death rate of 11.2/100,000 (1353 homicides) compared to Wyoming’s 4.9/100,000 and 29 homicides, which is the opposite point he was trying to make about Illinois.
Also this weekend, the national media started covering the daily gun violence that’s happening in our major cities:
While our nation is reeling from horrific acts of mass gun violence in Uvalde and Buffalo, gun violence ripped through communities across the country this weekend.
On Saturday, six people were shot and wounded during a dispute in downtown Chattanooga, TN. https://t.co/1l52tc9tl7
— Moms Demand Action (@MomsDemand) May 30, 2022
From CNN:
Six people were shot, and two of them suffered life-threatening injuries, following an altercation between two groups of people in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Saturday night, police said.
Patrolling officers heard gunshots around 11 p.m. in the Cherry Street area and arrived at a scene of “multiple parties exchanging gunfire and numerous people fleeing the area,” said police.
“Two individuals from one group started firing upon the other group,” Chattanooga Police Chief Celeste Murphy said in a news conference Sunday. “They believe that there wasn’t one intended target — at least in that other group — and all of the other victims that were shot were unintended.”
But, *why* did they cover this particular story this weekend rather than, say, a weekend of violence that saw 48 shot and 9 dead?
We briefly interrupted our coverage of the mass killing in Uvalde to report on the mass shooting in Chattanooga overnight. pic.twitter.com/bZEbaIrFwC
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 29, 2022
We suspect CNN will NOT be breaking into coverage for every mass shooting, especially the ones in Chicago.
***
