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Not Odessa: It's Not Shocking Why The Media Haven't Said Much About Another String of Shootings Over The Weekend

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  September 03, 2019 12:59 PM

The Windy City has improved in reducing the number of shootings, but this weekend was rather bloody. Forty-three people were shot over the Labor Day weekend, eight of them fatally. The Fourth of July and Labor Day weekends are the ones where the rash of shootings has been the worst in previous years. This year was no different in that regard (via Chicago Sun-Times):

At least 43 people were shot — eight of them fatally — in gun violence across Chicago over the Labor Day holiday weekend.

Though the city saw its lowest number of murders and shootings in August since 2011, according to data from Chicago police, the number of fatal shootings over the holiday weekend doubled the total from last year’s Labor Day weekend, when four people were killed and 23 others were wounded in citywide shootings.

The weekend’s latest fatal shooting happened Tuesday in Gresham on the South Side.

About 1:15 a.m., officers responded to a ShotSpotter alert in the 8500 block of South Aberdeen Street and found a 32-year-old man unresponsive with a gunshot wound to the head, police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

There are currently no reported witnesses to the shooting and the circumstances remain unknown, police said.


Early June also saw Chicago have one of the most violent weekends this year, though violent crime is still not as high as it was three years ago. Chicago remains one of the most stringent anti-gun cities in the country. These shootings occurred during the same weekend as the equally horrific Odessa, Texas shooting, where a man armed with an AR-15 rifle shot and killed seven people. Yet, that has received all the media attention. I wonder why?