The tragic mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida has understandably garnered a ton of media attention — but what if this same level of scrutiny was applied to gang-ridden warzones like Chicago?
This goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway: one innocent death at the hands of an armed criminal is one too many. However, if we’re going to apply educated solutions to these problems, we have to examine the bigger picture. Is access to guns really the catalyst that drives crime rates up? If that was the case, shouldn’t cities with the most stringent gun control laws be able to boast for having the lowest levels of violent crime?
This logic falls apart immediately when we examine cities like Chicago, which has been the center of some of the toughest gun laws in the United States. Despite these measures, the city accounted for nearly half the entire country’s rise in homicides during 2016 — despite the number being at a historic low.
With gang violence as prevalent as it is, you might assume national media outlets would be embedding journalists on the field the same way they did in Vietnam. But alas — there is no narrative to advance here, so the problem goes largely ignored.
~ Facts Not Memes
