7 ms·

60 people shot in Chicago over the weekend

14 points by dawhizkid 8y ago

pssflops 8y ago
ABC is reporting 66 shot [0] and 12 fatalities. [0] http://abc7chicago.com/66-shot-12-fatally-in-chicago-weekend-shootings/3892234/ http://abc7chicago.com/66-shot-12-fatally-in-chicago-weekend...
ythn 8y ago
Live by the sword, die by the sword. The mayor blames guns, I blame African American culture with it's gang and violence-glorifying music industry.
- sctb 8y ago
  Since you keep breaking the guidelines, we've banned the account. If you want it to be unbanned you can email us at hn@ycombinator.com. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dingo_bat 8y ago
Is there a riot going on in the city? TFA has literally no details except that the mayor has blamed the shootings on guns(?).
- codingdave 8y ago
  Click the 'Read More Here' link.
  - dingo_bat 8y ago
    Wow that was kind of stupid of me to miss that.
    - codingdave 8y ago
      Nah, it wasn't exactly the most user-friendly page.
dibscrunch 8y ago
Hacker News Guidelines What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic
netgusto 8y ago
A terrorist attack without terrorists. We're doing this to ourselves. I think it's time to make the gun illegals on the street on a massive scale.
- jeffdavis 8y ago
  What specific policy are you proposing?
  - netgusto 8y ago
    I'm not proposing any policy. Just pointing to a state of the world that I think would cause less shooting.
    - ilove_banh_mi 8y ago
      Chicago already has some of the strictest anti-gun policies in the US. [edit] They had, in effect and for decades, a ban on the sale of guns (requiring registration but then not actually allowing it). Some of the restrictions have been disallowed in recent years due to conflicting with the Constitution. This may be why the level of violence in that particular town is of interest to many social and political commentators.
      - netgusto 8y ago
        But are guns illegal, though? From what I can gather [1], they're not. Some semi-automatic firearms, considered as assault weapons, are illegal in Chicago. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Illinois https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Illinois
        towndrunk 8y ago
        So are you saying the Gangs will follow the laws?
        8y ago
jeffdavis 8y ago
How big of an area is this happening in? Would police saturation of the area be practical and effective?
- abrahamepton 8y ago
  A) Big. The south side alone is ~60% of the city; the west side is much smaller, but the point is that by land area (not a great measure, admittedly), there's just a ton of space to patrol. B) No. It's been tried, pretty consistently, with (at best) mixed results. Under Rahm, at one point (may still be true), CPD was paying boatloads of money in overtime to saturate violent neighborhoods. C) That said, the book Ghettoside makes the really convincing argument that neighborhoods like the ones under discussion in Chicago simultaneously suffer from under- and over-policing. There's a massive police presence in much of the south side, kinda, and a lot of people get arrested for a lot of stuff. At the same time, the murder clearance rate (the number of murders "solved" by the police) was ~17% in 2017 (https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/murder-clearance-rate-in-chicago-hit-new-low-in-2017/ https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/murder-clearance-rate-in-c...) but over 60% in the (rather more violent) 1990s. So a lot of people have a lot of negative interactions with police, but the most serious crimes - murder especially - rarely get solved. Lots of people in the neighborhood know (or suspect) who did it, but that person never goes to jail (for that crime), resentments build up, it becomes harder for police to cultivate good sources/relationships, retaliations occur, etc etc you can imagine how things go. D) There have been pretty successful interventions; CeaseFire comes to mind (https://chicagodefender.com/2018/01/10/the-return-of-ceasefire/ https://chicagodefender.com/2018/01/10/the-return-of-ceasefi...). But it's suffered from lack of money and infighting at the state level between Rs and Ds. The basic idea, though - intervene in violent situations with people who are from those neighborhoods and used to be in gangs - seems to work quite well. It just needs money. E) Crime is still actually down when compared to the 70s/80s/90s. Not that that's much comfort to someone living in one of the affected neighborhoods. But the country as a whole has become both more peaceful and more media-saturated, so aberrations like this get much more attention and the problem seems worse than it is - though again, that doesn't mean much to someone who just had a loved one get shot.
jeffdavis 8y ago
What is the main revenue source for these gangs? Just drugs? Maybe we could just decriminalize a lot of the drug trade and starve the gangs of the money to fund these gang wars.
- ythn 8y ago
  I think Japan did something similar to eradicate the Yakuza. To quote Hamilton (the play): "Make it impossible to justify the cause of the fight"
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    Do you have some source for claiming that the Yakuza have been eradicated in Japan? The best I could find indicates that they have been somewhat limited, but far from eliminated.
- abrahamepton 8y ago
  I think it's more that they've got a surplus of young men with no other options; historically, in any society where that occurs, you get violence sooner or later. Young men with nothing to do cause trouble, no matter where they are.
  - jeffdavis 8y ago
    There are many factors, I was asking specifically about the funding.
    - abrahamepton 8y ago
      My point (poorly articulated) was that, in an environment where the cost of labor is driven to zero, there doesn't necessarily need to be much revenue involved at all. And of course Chicago is a major cartel nexus, so there's plenty of illicit money sloshing around.
      - jeffdavis 8y ago

14 points by dawhizkid 8y ago

ABC is reporting 66 shot [0] and 12 fatalities. [0] http://abc7chicago.com/66-shot-12-fatally-in-chicago-weekend-shootings/3892234/ http://abc7chicago.com/66-shot-12-fatally-in-chicago-weekend...

ythn 8y ago

Live by the sword, die by the sword. The mayor blames guns, I blame African American culture with it's gang and violence-glorifying music industry.

sctb 8y ago
Since you keep breaking the guidelines, we've banned the account. If you want it to be unbanned you can email us at hn@ycombinator.com. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dingo_bat 8y ago

Is there a riot going on in the city? TFA has literally no details except that the mayor has blamed the shootings on guns(?).

codingdave 8y ago
Click the 'Read More Here' link.
- dingo_bat 8y ago
  Wow that was kind of stupid of me to miss that.
  - codingdave 8y ago
    Nah, it wasn't exactly the most user-friendly page.

dibscrunch 8y ago

Hacker News Guidelines What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic

netgusto 8y ago

A terrorist attack without terrorists. We're doing this to ourselves. I think it's time to make the gun illegals on the street on a massive scale.

jeffdavis 8y ago
What specific policy are you proposing?
- netgusto 8y ago
  I'm not proposing any policy. Just pointing to a state of the world that I think would cause less shooting.
  - ilove_banh_mi 8y ago
    Chicago already has some of the strictest anti-gun policies in the US. [edit] They had, in effect and for decades, a ban on the sale of guns (requiring registration but then not actually allowing it). Some of the restrictions have been disallowed in recent years due to conflicting with the Constitution. This may be why the level of violence in that particular town is of interest to many social and political commentators.
    - netgusto 8y ago
      But are guns illegal, though? From what I can gather [1], they're not. Some semi-automatic firearms, considered as assault weapons, are illegal in Chicago. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Illinois https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Illinois
      - towndrunk 8y ago
        So are you saying the Gangs will follow the laws?
        8y ago

jeffdavis 8y ago

How big of an area is this happening in? Would police saturation of the area be practical and effective?

abrahamepton 8y ago
A) Big. The south side alone is ~60% of the city; the west side is much smaller, but the point is that by land area (not a great measure, admittedly), there's just a ton of space to patrol. B) No. It's been tried, pretty consistently, with (at best) mixed results. Under Rahm, at one point (may still be true), CPD was paying boatloads of money in overtime to saturate violent neighborhoods. C) That said, the book Ghettoside makes the really convincing argument that neighborhoods like the ones under discussion in Chicago simultaneously suffer from under- and over-policing. There's a massive police presence in much of the south side, kinda, and a lot of people get arrested for a lot of stuff. At the same time, the murder clearance rate (the number of murders "solved" by the police) was ~17% in 2017 (https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/murder-clearance-rate-in-chicago-hit-new-low-in-2017/ https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/murder-clearance-rate-in-c...) but over 60% in the (rather more violent) 1990s. So a lot of people have a lot of negative interactions with police, but the most serious crimes - murder especially - rarely get solved. Lots of people in the neighborhood know (or suspect) who did it, but that person never goes to jail (for that crime), resentments build up, it becomes harder for police to cultivate good sources/relationships, retaliations occur, etc etc you can imagine how things go. D) There have been pretty successful interventions; CeaseFire comes to mind (https://chicagodefender.com/2018/01/10/the-return-of-ceasefire/ https://chicagodefender.com/2018/01/10/the-return-of-ceasefi...). But it's suffered from lack of money and infighting at the state level between Rs and Ds. The basic idea, though - intervene in violent situations with people who are from those neighborhoods and used to be in gangs - seems to work quite well. It just needs money. E) Crime is still actually down when compared to the 70s/80s/90s. Not that that's much comfort to someone living in one of the affected neighborhoods. But the country as a whole has become both more peaceful and more media-saturated, so aberrations like this get much more attention and the problem seems worse than it is - though again, that doesn't mean much to someone who just had a loved one get shot.

jeffdavis 8y ago

What is the main revenue source for these gangs? Just drugs? Maybe we could just decriminalize a lot of the drug trade and starve the gangs of the money to fund these gang wars.

ythn 8y ago
I think Japan did something similar to eradicate the Yakuza. To quote Hamilton (the play): "Make it impossible to justify the cause of the fight"
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  Do you have some source for claiming that the Yakuza have been eradicated in Japan? The best I could find indicates that they have been somewhat limited, but far from eliminated.
abrahamepton 8y ago
I think it's more that they've got a surplus of young men with no other options; historically, in any society where that occurs, you get violence sooner or later. Young men with nothing to do cause trouble, no matter where they are.
- jeffdavis 8y ago
  There are many factors, I was asking specifically about the funding.
  - abrahamepton 8y ago
    My point (poorly articulated) was that, in an environment where the cost of labor is driven to zero, there doesn't necessarily need to be much revenue involved at all. And of course Chicago is a major cartel nexus, so there's plenty of illicit money sloshing around.
    - jeffdavis 8y ago