A Sad Milestone

According to recently released crime statistics, the FBI ranked Chicago as the Murder Capital of the United States. The relevant numbers are as follows:

In new crime statistics released Monday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported 500 murders in Chicago in 2012, up sharply from the 431 recorded in 2011. New York reported 419 murders last year, compared with 515 in 2011.

By the looks of it, Chicago will surpass that number this year with 311 homicides to date, according to statistics complied by RedEye.

These sad statistics are often cited by gun-control advocates who seek to greatly circumscribe, or even eliminate the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms. The reality is that no amount of extra background-checking, limitations to magazine capacities, or mandatory psych evaluations, will change the numbers. The simple fact is that people with nefarious motives, can and do acquire guns illegally and cheaply.

Those with mental instabilities, such as Adam Lanza and Aaron Alexis are not easily prohibited from owning or obtaining guns either because mental illness can take many forms and is often masked by other factors. That is, until some fateful threshold is reached, or when the restraints that support more or less normal behavior are taken away.

But there is something else at work here that must be considered. It is somehow easier for us as a nation to face the notion of a single instance of evil, be it a deranged sniper in a tower, or a sadistic despot in a far away country. It is much harder to look squarely in the face of epidemic violence and call it what it is. The scope is too wide, the answers too complex.

In Chicago, as I believe in most major metropolitan areas, homicides committed by firearm are almost entirely committed by gang members against other gang members and unfortunate by-standers.

Gang culture, with its emphasis on power, money, control over others, violence as a reasonable means to settle any dispute, is promulgated in our culture though music, movies, video games, and even sports. Chicago is beset by the invasion of gangs from other parts of the country and beyond the U.S. border.

According to studies from the University of Illinois Chicago, the two most prevalent gangs in metro-Chicago are the Black Gangster Disciples and the Latin Kings. Each gang—and there are many others sharing territory in the metro area—number over 25,000 members in Chicago alone.

Both of these gangs have their roots here, but have chapters across North America and Central/Latin America. That makes Chicago an exporter of gangs and gang culture. When combined with failing schools, single-parent families, and rampant poverty, gangs hold out a kind of salvation to impressionable young people.

This salvation takes the form of a sense of belonging to the group, something missing at home and in school. Members are imbued with a common purpose and the promise of lucrative rewards for acting in the interests of the gang. The gang provides a false sense of security to these vulnerable—let’s not mince words and call them what they are—children, by assurances that there will be someone who’s “got your back,” even if all that amounts to is avenging your death if you should die at the hands of a rival gang.

There is a great deal of weeping and gnashing of teeth over the plague of violence here in Chicago, and rightly so, but I never hear anyone talk about the roots of the problem. As with all types of human depravity, murder begins in the soul.

A heart hardened to its fellow man, callused and desensitized by the flood of violence in its culture, and despair in its neighborhood, is never far from pulling a trigger through some warped sense of honor or entitlement.

How the Lord must weep over these lost children. How He must sob over the destruction of a great nation.