"Tragic number": Chicago reaches 500 homicides

CHICAGO Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy says the city has logged its 500th homicide of the year.

McCarthy issued a statement Friday calling the milestone a "tragic number that is reflective of the gang violence and proliferation of illegal guns that have plagued some of our neighborhoods."

The police department went back and forth Friday, first verifying the 500th killing, then backing off and saying an earlier death was still being investigated.

By late Friday, police confirmed 40-year-old Nathaniel Jackson had become the 500th homicide victim when he was fatally shot in the head outside a convenience store on the city's West Side.

The last time Chicago reached the 500-homicide mark was in 2008, when the year ended with 512 killings. Last year, city records show Chicago had 435 homicides.

[ammo17]

how many of these murders were committed by card carrying n.r.a. members???

[localphoneman]

ZERO

[jolhoft1]

I'm glad that Lord Rahm's excessive, restrictive gun control is working. I suppose Vice-King Biden will want to include those laws into a nationwide, mandatory gun control effort?

[SmBusMan]

MOVE!

[Swiftest]

They want to put a cop in every school when the cop are not even able to handle the bad guys on the street.

[eroteme2]

500 Chicago homicides for the year? The obesity solving Bloomberg said it best: the subway push deaths must be kept in perspective, what we want to focus on today is the overall safety in New York. This should equally apply to those living in Chicago. They must be thankful there are so many Chicago residents who were not murdered in 2012. Meanwhile Bloomberg wll be working on what he can do to stop New Yorkers from enjoying two 16oz sugary sodas instead of their previous 32oz sugary soda.

[[oweghn]

If you have a 16 oz drink in each hand, you can't be holding a gun. That Bloomberg is thinking all the time.

[madasabull]

Still laughing at the 16oz drink in each hand :)

[judymar14]

77% of these murders are committed by gangbangers on the south/westsides of Chicago. They do not get them from registered legal gun owners, they get the from criminals who bring guns into the city to sell at double to tripple the price to gangs. Instead of yelling for gun-control for law abiding citizens, stop guns being sold to these low-life scum of the earth gangbangers. More police could be put to better use than patrolling the neighborhoods of the other 33%.

It would be more of a help to bring our soldiers home to deal with our own 'insurgents'. But, that makes too much sense and will never happen. If it did, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would be picketting and yelling racism.

[Proud2BOnRight]

This COMMUNITY in Chicago doesn't appear to be very ORGANIZED.

[credibility2]

I live in the Chicago-area and grew up in the Englewood neighborhood. There are too many gang-bangers using illegal guns and too few cops to battle the thugs. Our judicial system panders to these criminals and lets them off too easy. Many of these criminals have been poorly raised by a dysfunctional parent. These criminals haven't been taught to have any respect for human life, including their own, and raised to be irresponsible and take whatever they can take and from whomever and without any consequences or accountability. The decent, moral, law-abiding citizens are living in terror. These thugs should be legally labeled as domestic terrorists and the military brought in to take care of the matter permanently, using whatever means necessary to rid the streets of the trash to end the violence.

[curtis41]

Looks much like Washington, D.C. in that when guns are prohibited from law-abiding folks, they are the subject of a lot of gun crimes. To me, the drug dealer on drug dealer crimes save the taxpayers a lot of money, and is a form of natural selection of Darwin, but the problem is those innocents caught in the cross-fire. Illinois should join the rest of the country and stop tying the hands of their residents, and permit self-defense at least in their homes. Restrictive gun laws, now numbering in the 20 thousand range in the U.S., do not generally work, and some, like denying citizens firearms in their own homes adds to the death toll, not reduce it. I guess most of the politicians in Chicago have not read More Guns, Less Crime, by John Lott. This paperback is an academic study of the relationships among guns, gun laws and crime. It is very well done, and backed up by a lot of studies, analysis and discussion of limitations of the various studies. A very eye-opening read for anyone interested in the relationships covered in this book. One flaw in all the gun legislation is criminals generally do not pay any attention to firearm laws, that is one reason they are called criminals. I am sorry to see all the NRA, NAGR and other organization bashing by the newspapers, radio and TV. Politicians like Feinstein, who would take up all the guns if she "just had the votes" is crafting gun legislation now, and it promises to be even more restrictive, but ineffective as well. Americans should realize it is a very bad decision to trade self-defense, constitutional rights and personal liberties for an opportunistic gun-grabber's perception of public safety. Had not the NRA made the suggestion of armed guards in the schools (of which about 1/3 are already staffed by armed guards), the idea would have gotten a much warmer reception. I think the NRA is right on this one.

[empirebuilder]

Chicago needs to change it's name to Detroit II