Chicago Killings Cost $2.5 Billion as Murders Top N.Y.’s

[Purveyor]

When Gregory Glinsey was fatally shot while buying ice for his mother’s 80th birthday party, the emotional toll on his family was incalculable. The immediate price to the public was $800 for his autopsy.

His slaying and 505 others in Chicago last year scarred it with a rising homicide rate as most cities saw declines. Another 2,000 non-fatal shootings in Chicago added costs measured in shuttered businesses, lost wages, disability checks and depopulation. In Glinsey’s case, the price of his random killing mounted before his mother knew her 54-year-old son wouldn’t return from a convenience store in the South Shore neighborhood.

More than three dozen police swarmed the scene of the Feb. 19, 2012, shooting, which also killed a 19-year-old and injured five other teenagers. After $1,000 ambulance rides to hospitals for each survivor, the combined trauma-care bill would, on average, top $250,000. Gunfire outside Budget Food & Liquors cost its owner a tenant and $1,000 in monthly rent: A tax preparer next door bolted after a bullet from another shooting ripped past a secretary’s head.

“Violence hurts the economy, and sooner or later it permeates everything,” said Teyonda Wertz, head of South Shore’s chamber of commerce. “Unless we change our crime situation, it’ll kill us.”

All told, shootings cost Chicago $2.5 billion a year, or about $2,500 per household, according to Jens Ludwig, director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab. Many of those costs are intangibles, Ludwig said, like keeping people from going outside or letting their children walk to school. Reducing even a fraction of the carnage, though, would free up more money than the city expects to save each year from the closing of 49 elementary schools approved yesterday by the school board.

MORE...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-23/first-lady-s-chicago-shows-gun-toll-for-city-that-bleeds.html

[TheFutureWillCome]

1. I thought

Chicago and NY had some of the toughest gun laws in the country.

[hunter]

2. And???

It's not hard for a criminal to get a gun.

It would be if the entire nation had strict gun control laws.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I do want to take away your guns.

[HooptieWagon]

5. Good idea! Because banning booze and drugs made them so hard to get.

Gun banners aren't the sharpest tools in the shed...

[TheFutureWillCome]

6. but, but

it just makes so much sense

[hunter]

8. Check out my journal...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2752619

I'm sharp, and I know guns.

Do watch out for spot. Sometimes I find guns in his poop.

[avogadro]

11. You want to take away my guns?

I can assure you that will never happen.

[hunter]

12. I've taken guns away from people.

Car key's I'll give back when they're sober.

Guns, never.

[moondust]

3. Local laws don't work on contraband.

You obviously can't inspect every car, truck, train, plane, boat, and motorcycle entering the city. Gun laws need to be national, which would help but still not completely stop smuggling.

[TheFutureWillCome]

4. oh

okay I see

[Buzz Clik]

7. Good lord.

Yo, Frank! Another noob needs some coaching.

See, you can't start tossing wingnut talking points right out of the box. Build up slowly. Get a couple of K of posts in the Lounge or someplace benign. Then, slowly build up some cred in GD. Then, once you start getting the feel for the forum, drop a few bombs here and there and attack unpopular DUers ('cause no one will complain).

Just take it easy, okay?

EDIT: This would be a good time to get all huffy at me and alert my post.

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. Shithead gunners in Indiana and southern Illinois get rich selling illegal guns to gangsters

And pretending that they were "lost" or "stolen." The so-called legitimate gun dealers and owners in those areas funnel guns to the illicit market. And then the asshole gunners have the nerve to laugh about it: "Hahaha..don't you have tough gun laws, hahahaha." Laughing and joking about the murders that they themselves enable. It's the sign of a sociopathic shithead.

[hunter]

10. My city has more gun murders per capita than Chicago or NYC...

... slightly less than Oakland or Detroit.

I don't like guns.