Hadiya Pendleton Funeral Attended by First Lady Michelle Obama, City Officials

Clues to think about:

1) It's not for lack of gun laws per se; something else is the problem:

Strict Gun Laws in Chicago Can’t Stem Fatal Shots
By Monica Davey, New York Times, Jan. 29/30, 2013

CHICAGO — Not a single gun shop can be found in this city because they are outlawed. Handguns were banned in Chicago for decades, too, until 2010, when the United States Supreme Court ruled that was going too far, leading city leaders to settle for restrictions some describe as the closest they could get legally to a ban without a ban. Despite a continuing legal fight, Illinois remains the only state in the nation with no provision to let private citizens carry guns in public.

And yet Chicago, a city with no civilian gun ranges and bans on both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, finds itself laboring to stem a flood of gun violence that contributed to more than 500 homicides last year and at least 40 killings already in 2013, including a fatal shooting of a 15-year-old girl on Tuesday [....]

Chicago’s experience reveals the complications inherent in carrying out local gun laws around the nation. Less restrictive laws in neighboring communities and states not only make guns easy to obtain nearby, but layers of differing laws — local and state — make it difficult to police violations. And though many describe the local and state gun laws here as relatively stringent, penalties for violating them — from jail time to fines — have not proven as severe as they are in some other places, reducing the incentive to comply. [....]

2) Meanwhile, in NYC,

a) my bold emphasis and underlining (especially meant for those who have the tendency to think the world is crazier than it has ever been ):

New York City Suicide Rate Will Likely Top Murder Rate For 2012
Huffington Post, 12/20/2012

[....] According to the NYPD, as of December 12th, there were 388 murders on the year, a sizable 20 percent drop from the same time last year, when there were 493 murders.

The NYPD says that number will likely remain under 400 before the ball drops in Times Square, making it the lowest murder rate the city's seen since 1960, when 390 homicides were reported.

(For perspective, 2,245 people in New York City fell victim to homicide in 1990.)

As Gothamist points out, New York City averages about 475 suicides a year. The Department of Health and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner hasn't released exact number of suicides yet for 2012, but if it's near the average rate, there will have been more suicides than murders in New York City this year. [....]

b) and, my bold emphasis again:

Bloomberg Says Gun Control Responsible For Lower New York Crime Rates, Experts Agree
By Colleen Long, Huffington Post, Jan. 23, 2013

[....] "New York is showing the way for some good strategies in policing," said Harold Pollack, co-director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab.

Getting a thin layer of guns off the streets matters, said Franklin Zimring, author of "The City that Became Safe: New York's Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control."

"Gun policing in New York got much more effective as every kind of street policing got more effective," he said.

Bloomberg is leading the charge but is backed by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a coalition he started that now has more than 800 mayors from around the country.[....]

At Bloomberg's urging in 2007, the state passed mandatory minimum sentencing laws for gun convictions. A city gun offender registry was created in which officers track serious gun convicts, not unlike sex offenders. Bloomberg fronted a sting operation to expose the gun show loophole.

But the laws didn't start working until police effectively started enforcing them, said Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Most of the murders in the city are committed with guns – that hasn't changed. But policing has. Under Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, "hot spots policing" proliferated, in which officers flood high-crime areas tracked by a computer reporting system. The department formed a firearms suppression unit in 2006 that identifies traffickers and uses undercover officers to buy and arrest them.

Crime has dropped almost across the board in the decade Bloomberg has been in office. There were 418 killings last year for a population of 8 million people, the lowest number since reliable records were kept starting in 1963. Chicago, for example, had 487 for 2 million people. In 1990, New York City had an all-time high of 2,245 killings.

"Is a lot of that effective street gun policing? Yes," Zimring said.

People caught violating the laws get punished, even famous people, like former New York Giants football star Plaxico Burress, who walked into a nightclub with a loaded gun tucked into his track pants in 2008 and accidentally shot himself in the thigh. The wide receiver had no criminal record but spent nearly two years in jail on a weapons charge.

"That's a deterrent," said Pollack of the crime lab. "You want to create a deterrent for carrying a gun, you prosecute someone who didn't injure anyone else. A celebrity, no less."

Most of the guns used in shootings in the city come from out of state, officials said. Overall, New York City has about 5,100 firearm-related arrests each year – the majority of the 7,600 or so statewide, according to statistics from the state Division of Criminal Justice Services.

Those figures don't include when someone is arrested on a murder charge for shooting another person to death. A convicted gun trafficker was sentenced just last week in Manhattan to 15 years for selling 15 illegal guns to an undercover officer.

Mark Kleiman, a professor who studies crime policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that by enforcing laws, authorities in New York are keeping people off the streets who are more likely to be committing serious crime.

"There are clear consequences for having an illegal gun," he said. [....]

Did the Seattle guy perform at the mayor's inauguaration? And was he cute, innocent and sweet?

A lot of people thought so.

You think it  might be that they have a lot more people on SSRI's in Chicago than in New York City?

Sort of.

Drugs and violence are very good friends. Plenty of those shootings have alot to do with the crack cocaine trade and cocaine acts by "blocking the reuptake of certain neurotransmitters such as dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin."

Didn't expect that, did you?

We have one answer to my question, I believe. First see my bold below:

2 charged with murder in Hadiya Pendleton slaying

Chicago Tribune, February 11, 2013

[....] Michael Ward, 18, and Kenneth Williams, 20, are charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and aggravated battery with a firearm in the attack that also left two other teens wounded in Harsh Park late last month, about a mile from President Barack Obama's Kenwood home.

Ward, of the 3900 block of South Lake Park Avenue, told police the shooting was in retaliation for Williams getting wounded last July on the South Side, according to Superintendent Garry McCarthy.

Williams, of the 300 block of West 59th Street, had been shot July 11 near Pershing Road and Lake Park Avenue, police said. But he refused to sign a complaint against those suspected in the attack, McCarthy said.....

Ward and Williams are members of the Gangster Disciples, sources said.

Ward pleaded guilty early last year in a 2011 aggravated unlawful use of a weapon case and was given two years probation, according to court records. After an arrest on criminal trespass to a vehicle last summer, he was held without bond for a few weeks, but was released after a Sept. 9, 2012, hearing [....]

Then take a look at this article from Sunday, before we knew the above. I thought of posting it here but didn't. I should have, because the writer was spot on:

Why Chicago bleeds

Blame lax enforcement for the fact that gun crimes plague the Second City even as they continue to fall in New York

By James Wareren, New York Daily News, Feb, 10, 2013

[....] In short, in New York City, the courts follow through with serious punishment for those who wield illegal weapons.

In Chicago, with precious few exceptions, they let those who brandish firearms go right back on the street.[.....]

It’s close to inconceivable that a Chicago Bear would suffer the same fate in Chicago, where prosecution of gun crimes simply does not have the same priority.

Yes, the two cities are different places in other respects, as underscored by Jens Ludwig, who directs the University of Chicago Crime Lab. In part, he argues that Chicago crime reflects concentrations of poverty that dwarf those found in New York. He also maintains that the recession hit Chicago harder, with stiffer city budget cuts linked to higher crime rates.

But he also points to the courts for their priorities. They simply do not take illegal carries as seriously as they should.

Chicago must zero in on exactly where the breakdown is happening. If the cop on the beat is vigilant toward guns, what’s happening then? Is there a lack of desire to prosecute such crimes by prosecutors who are stretched thin? Or do prosecutors not quite trust many of the cases brought by police? And are judges looking the other way?

There is no real consensus, though it is crystal clear that the bad guys know the risk of bringing illegal guns into Chicago falls short of onerous, unlike in New York.

What is an often-articulated claim of Chicago’s comparative complexity comes from Patrick Fitzgerald, a Brooklyn native and renowned federal prosecutor who just ended a 10-year run as U.S. Attorney for the Chicago-based Northern District of Illinois.

He also prosecuted Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and, as a Justice Department special counsel, prosecuted Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, for perjury.

Fitzgerald subscribes to the belief that Chicago’s more numerous and deeply entrenched multi-generational gangs — said to number more than 100,000 members by credible estimates — play a role.

At minimum, he contends, they aggravate the problem when combined with drugs, too many guns, the lack of tough mandatory minimum sentences and, perhaps, less-demanding judges.

He has little sympathy for reflexive National Rifle Association responses to Chicago’s travail, namely that it somehow shows that gun control doesn’t work or that mere enforcement of existing laws is the solution.

“You can’t take seriously people who don’t want to know where the guns come from,” Fitzgerald, who is now in private practice, told me.

He might have added, as do other experts, that the NRA has consistently sought to weaken law enforcement’s ability to get guns off the street and even stymied attempts by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the roots of gun violence [....]