Obama Attacks Violence in Chicago

[illinoisprogressive]

Barack Obama spoke in a church this morning a few blocks from where he did organizing years ago. There has been an epidemic of gun violence in Chicago schools. The problem is growing and getting worse.





Speaking to a Sunday congregation in Chicago, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama used often-fiery rhetoric to mourn the city's recent spate of gun violence and challenged the government, the gun lobby and the public to do more to stop it.

"Our playgrounds have become battlegrounds. Our streets have become cemeteries. Our schools have become places to mourn the ones we've lost," Obama told a standing-room-only congregation at Vernon Park Church of God on Chicago's Far South Side.

The Illinois Democrat recounted how 32 Chicago public schoolchildren were killed during the last school year, and noted that two more teens were shot in the past week in a South Side schoolyard.

"The violence is unacceptable, and it's got to stop," he said.

Obama called for better enforcement of existing gun laws, tighter background checks on gun buyers and for making an expired assault weapon ban permanent.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-obamagunsjul16,1,2507768.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

[Ethelk2044]

1. Maybe it will bring it to the attention of everyone. Hopefully,

it will cause people to take action.

[Kingstree]

2. This is a national issue

that affects all citizens and it is happens across the board with all races, not just one.

[illinoisprogressive]

3. maybe. but, these are not suburban white kids getting shot.

[Kingstree]

9. If crime statistics were revealed for every ethic group by age group

you would see a different picture. White kids in suburbia as well as other areas in this country kill just as much as minorities. It's just not carried by their media as much as minorities. This media is just biased when it comes to news coverage. The white community, the second largest population in the nation and murder is not at a high level? It's just not portrayed unless it's sensational plus I sense a little protection.

[flying rabbit]

4. Attacks violence?

interesting word choice

[NYCGirl]

6. That's the headline in the Chicago Tribune. NT

[flying rabbit]

7. Still...

It has that "war on violence" vibe. Kind of creates a cognitive dissonance.

[benEzra]

5. According to the FBI, Illinois had 448 murders in 2005...

According to the FBI, Illinois had 448 murders in 2005. All rifles COMBINED accounted for only 4 of them, which is why fighting to ban the most popular civilian rifles in the United States is just wrongheaded, particularly since half of gun owners are Dems and indies.

Rifles are not a crime problem in the United States and never have been.

Otherwise a very good speech, IMO.


----------------
Why people pushing rifle bans are stuck in the 1970's.

Dems and the Gun Issue - Now What? (written in 2004, largely vindicated in 2006, IMO). Background on the gun issue for non-gunnies, i.e. "Why Hunting Is Irrelevant to the Gun Issue."

[ddeclue]

8. but Obama is still wrong to compare Chicago crime to the war in Iraq!

Re: Obama bemoans 'epidemic of violence' – this article has a major flaw in that it failed to call Obama on making a very faulty comparison.

By NATHANIEL HERNANDEZ
Associated Press Writer

”CHICAGO - Standing before a church congregation that has witnessed
inner-city violence firsthand, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack
Obama said Sunday that more must be done to end a social ill that is
"sickening the soul of this nation."

Obama told churchgoers at the Vernon Park Church of God on Chicago's
South Side that too many young lives are being claimed by violence and
more must be done to combat the problem….”




While there is certainly an epidemic of violence recently (my town of Orlando has had record murder rates in the last few years) Obama is totally wrong in this argument (comparing youth deaths in Chicago to IL soldiers killed in Iraq) because he isn't comparing like sized populations!

There are far more student aged persons in Chicago than there are Illinois soldiers in Iraq so this is a totally invalid comparison and it is the exact same type that Republicans use to argue that Iraq "isn't so bad" when the reality is that Iraq is much worse than anything anywhere in the U.S.A. - it's a WAR ZONE in Iraq folks!

There are a total of 160,000 U.S. troops give or take in Iraq - only a small portion of these come from the state of Illinois probably no more than a few thousand - according to this Congressman's website there are only 2400 ING soldiers in Iraq:

http://www.house.gov/list/hearing/il10_kirk/natlguardreservists.html

According to this website there have been 129 Illinois based casualties in the war.

You would need to extrapolate the number of IL casualties by the ratio of ING soldiers in Iraq to the average population of student aged residents of Chicago over the past few years to get a reasonable comparison...

According to this website:

http://chicago.about.com/b/a/215535.htm

There are 200,962 students of approximately high school age (15-19) and another 239,252 of approximately college age (20-24). That's about 440,000 persons of "student" age in Chicago or about 183 times as many ING troops as in Iraq.

Therefore to compare apples to apples you'd need to multiply the 129 IL soldier deaths in Iraq by 183 times to get a reasonable estimate (23607 since March 2003) for comparing the crime rate in Chicago vs. deaths in Iraq.

In other words if there had been approximately 23,607 murders in the metro Chicago area since March 2003 then Obama would right in claiming Chicago were worse than Iraq.

But there HASN'T BEEN... he's off by over an order of magnitude..

According to this website:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20061222/ai_n17073001

there have been about 450 murders a year over the last several years- even if we allow for a spike of 25% in the last year - in the 53 months since the war began in Iraq there would have been only 2100 murders in Chicago.

In other words Chicago only has about 8.89% the murder rate per capita of those ING soldiers in Iraq - 2100 vs. 23607.

and THAT is why this is fallacious reasoning and why Obama is wrong to go around saying it.

It's the same kind of rhetoric Republicans have repeatedly used to falsely claim that Iraq was less dangerous than (pick a city) - Detroit, Los Angeles, Washington, NYC and now we can add Chicago to that list.

Crime in cities is certainly up all across the boards and an issue we need to address as Democrats but until we start having 600 to 1,000 murders a month in major American cities, nothing that is happening here even comes close to what is happening in Iraq and we should refrain from making this invalid comparison!

Respectfully,

Doug De Clue
Orlando, FL