Jesse Jackson: The Gun lobby can be defeated

[SecularMotion]

Each Monday in Chicago, we gird ourselves for the most recent score. Not on how well the Bears, Bulls or Blackhawks, Cubs or White Sox have fared, but on how many new victims of guns have been racked up. This weekend, three were killed with 17 other shooting victims, according to CBS News.

Victims of gun shootings are spiking in Chicago and in cities across the country. From 2014 to 2015 to date, the murder rate in Milwaukee is up 76 percent. In St. Louis it’s up 60 percent, in Baltimore up 56 percent, and in the nation’s capital up 44 percent. Chicago is up “only” 20 percent, but the numbers are staggering — from 244 to 294 to date.

Someone in Chicago has been shot every 2.84 hours this year, a total of 2,349 shootings from January 1 to October 6, according to the Chicago Tribune tally.

Over five years, Chicago police report 12,814 shootings and 2,583 murders, according to a chart provided me by the Chicago Police Department. We lost nearly as many people in Chicago alone as we lost on 9/11. This violence also terrorizes.

http://chicago.suntimes.com/opinion/7/71/1022359/jesse-jackson-gun-lobby-can-defeated