Among the gun-violence issues easily conflated these days: Newtown and Chicago. Newtown had 20 Elementary School students and six faculty members slaughtered in December. Chicago had 500 homicides last year.
First Lady Michelle Obama recently visited Chicago to speak out about youth violence and the tragic toll it has been exacting. For her, the issue was personal. One Chicago teen was murdered barely a mile from the Obamas’ South Side home. She had recently participated in the president’s inaugural celebration. Mrs. Obama attended the funeral. She also noted that good fortune had smiled on her with a safe neighborhood to grow up in and good schools to attend. Others, mainly African-American kids, weren’t so lucky.
But while violence and guns are the common theme, the core issues are societally separate. Newtown is primarily about easy access to assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Background checks, which wouldn’t have prevented Newtown, are a corollary matter. The critical variable: Second Amendment perversions and a “Live Free or Die” mentality.
Chicago, while the worst example, is part of an inner city, black pathology that unconscionably continues to ravish across generations and has nothing to do with the Second Amendment and little to do with death by Bushmaster. It has everything to do with gangs, absent or unhealthy role models, overwhelmed schools and a dysfunctional culture. Some things you just can’t blame on Wayne LaPierre.